How to Display Crafts at a Craft Fair

The secret to displaying crafts at a craft fair are shared here by Erin Proctor Herb of LinkedIn group Handmade Jewelry.

Pricing Crafts Correctly Sells Crafts

As far as pricing your handmade crafts go you need something called a loss leader.

A loss leader is a handcrafted item or a few items sold at a loss. They get buyers of art through the door to your craft show booth or online craft store and getting out their wallet. After they've gotten out their wallet they are easier to sell to.

Keep a few items as loss leaders, adjust some of your prices to be more inline with the real market price (for crafts similar to yours) but not at it, and adjust the majority of the items to be real market price.

David Salerno of one of my LinkedIn Groups shared the tip below.

Putting Links on Ebay, Etsy and Handmade Selling Sites

"... your idea of putting an Etsy link in your eBay listings is a great idea and certainly something I would not consider "unethical" but unfortunatley eBay will not allow it.

How Your Art or Craft Business
Is Like Playing Facebook Games

I admit it! I’m addicted to Sorority Life on Facebook. It's a game where you do things like the girls in a sorority would. You must add a certain number of new friends every level or you are bound to be beat. You send your friends gifts and vote for them etc.

What does this have to do with my art or craft show booth?

You only have so many friends you can invite each day.

Simple Inexpensive Ways to Collect Art Festival Customers Contact Information

Are you collecting contact information of people who buy your one of a kind works of art, why not?

Collecting customers contact information is simple and makes it easier to make sales increasing profits.

Here's how:

1. Use duplicate receipts.

How to Add Art and Craft Buyers
To Mailing Lists

First read Why Add Art and Craft Buyers to Mailing Lists.

Collect Art Buyers Contact Information

Decide what information you need to mail and email your customers useful information that will encourage them to buy your one of kind handcrafted art work. Information that is generally collected includes:

First Name Last Name Address City State Zip Code Phone Number Email Address Birth Date

You need to be a great salesman to make money selling arts and crafts. The problem is how do I become a great salesman without becoming the pushy salesman?

I have to admit I haven’t been the best example of a good art and craft salesman. Why, because I was always afraid of being too pushy.

One day I was riding in my sisters car. The roads were slick and the car slid off the road into a deep snowbank. The car was very stuck and trying to drive it out did no good. Along came a car with 5 guys in it. They couldn’t pull the car out using their car. They all got out and stood at different points around my sisters car then lifted up her car and put it back on the road.

One guy couldn’t have lifted the car alone, but together the 5 of them easily moved it.

Business is like lifting heavy objects.

By Natalie Goyette

It’s not always easy. You have to be creative with how you pare your craft show costs down. That’s what I’m going to help you with. I think there are 4 main ways you can do this, without sacrificing the quality of your craft, nor affecting the overall sales.

1.) Buy in bulk – You do it for your groceries in order to save a few pennies, so why not on your craft supplies? If you are buying pipe cleaners (for example) and you only need 10, it might cost you $2 – because you are paying for nice packaging and the convenience of only purchasing 10.

Introduction to Artisan Blacksmith David Robertson

David is a 44 year old blacksmith who grew up just outside Hamilton Ontario Canada. He has always been an artist who developed his talent for blacksmithing in college, and sold his work at shows to pay for school.  He has had his own blacksmith business 20 plus years.

David wrote the book How to Be Successful in Your Craft Business which I can’t wait to buy for myself after reading this powerful interview.

Recently I’ve been working to make my craft business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished crafts and business projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam.

Parts of this 7 part series have been reprinted with permission from the article “7 Common Disconnects In Retail Business” by Pam Grimm of Ideaco.

7 Common Disconnects In Retail Business

4.  Assuming not Assessing: When a staff person could speak about products, she often told everything she knew about it before asking any questions.

How to Setup Your Art
or Craft Show Booth
Facebook Business Page

Does your craft business need a Facebook business page?

• Facebook has 800 million plus active users.
• More than 50% of active users log on Facebook on any day.
• Average Facebook users have 130 friends

More Facebook statistics

Difference Between Creating Interest in Your Arts and Crafts
and Getting People To Buy Your Crafts

To have a successful full time business selling arts and crafts (defined as making enough income to support yourself or your family without having a part time job) two things must happen.

1. There must be enough people interested in buying your arts and crafts.
2. You must be able to persuade people interested in your art to buy.

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam.

“Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work
toward them everyday, will do more to guarantee your success than any
other single factor.”
~Brian Tracy

How do you know if your craft show booth is successful if you haven’t defined what success means to you?

Does success mean money to you, if yes how much money? Does success mean time to spend with your family, how much time? Does it mean working fewer days and hours a week, how many hours a week is success to you? Does success mean working from a constant vacation-where, working from home, quitting your other job, or having a really great car -what kind? Does success mean talking to 100 people and getting the contact information for 25 so you can follow up with them?

Write down your goals for your handcrafted art and craft business.

Reasons Art Festival Customer Won’t Buy

Customers won’t buy art from you if:

• They don’t know where to find your handmade craft.
• They aren’t prepared to buy now. For instance they weren’t expecting to see a handcrafted product they wanted so they don’t have money right now.
• They don’t know what you are selling.
• You aren’t selling what they want.
• Your handcrafted art is hard to get, the wrong price or poor quality.

Sell Handcrafted Jewelry
by Making Your Booth
Stand Out at Shows

How can you make your booth stand out at jewelry shows?

1. Specialize in something!

Artisans can specialize in:

* gold or silver jewelry
* vintage pieces
* bridal jewelry
* jewelry from natural gemstone, precious or semi-precious stones
* Western, outdoor, rugged, or nature jewelry
* Silverware jewelry
* Pieces inspired by any race or nationality
* Beaded jewelry
* remake antique jewelry

Your pieces can be inspired by a place such as all your pieces having the colors of the Grand Canyon or your favorite mountain scene.

There are many benefits to hiring your children to work in your art or craft show booth. Your children will learn responsibility and business skills while your craft business will reap the tax benefits. You can teach your child about scheduling, work ethic, entrepreneurship, setting goals and accomplishing them to the best of your ability.

Give your child clear tasks and hold them accountable for accomplishing them.

The law is simple treat your child like an employee :

1. Have your child do tasks that are appropriate for their age.

Easy instructions for creating a website are located at:
http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net/build a website/

How to Price My Art or Craft Show Product

Pricing art or craft show products is more science than art. Don't just set a price you think is okay and expect to sell a lot of your handmade crafts for profit.

Cost to Create Crafts
What does it costs to make your crafts? Include costs of supplies used to create your product plus a little more to buy extra craft supplies.