In order to have a successful full time business selling your 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 who are interested in your art to buy.

These are two very separate and distinct problems with different solutions.

First one needs to realize that to be very successful selling their handcrafted goods they must chose to create a craft that is wanted and needed by a large enough group of people to support the number of sales the artist needs per day, week, month or year.

Most artists choose which craft to sell based on which one they like to create the most, the one they get the most compliments on, or the one they like the best. This is actually backward and can be detrimental to your business ever succeeding.

Crafters spend too much time looking for those who want their crafts this way. Artists don't realize they are trying to make people who aren't even interested in their art not only like it, but buy it-a losing game to be sure. 

They are always looking for people interested in their handcrafted merchandise and have no real direction to look... instead of going to a group of people who are already interested in their crafts and trying to persuade them to buy.

It's like trying to tell your customers their favorite color is purple when really their favorite color is green. They aren't going to even want to stand around and listen.

Like trying to sell hand tatted doilies to every child, teen, and young single adult that comes near your booth rather than slightly more mature married adults and grandmothers.

Let's be honest here we can't make people like what they don't like or want. They just won't buy it and our time and money will be wasted in the effort.

If your artwork meets the needs of a large group of people but still seems like people aren't interested the problem may be:

• is the group of people who want, need, and like your product large enough?
  • one caveat here is that you want to target a very specific group of people. Get too generic and you go back full circle.
• are you targeting your prospects well in your advertising, marketing and offers?
• are they are willing to pay your price to get it?
• are you selling where your buyers are, where they are prepared to buy, when they are prepared to buy?

What successful crafters do is choose a large group of people with common needs then meet the needs of those people.
They can do research and see if there are enough buyers in the group to support their dream of not having to work a part time job that detracts from a craft business.

You can still succeed selling your artwork this way if

• there is a large enough group of people who want, need, and like your product.
• they are willing to pay your price to get it.
• you learn where your buyers are and go where your they are to sell your product.
• you don't mind that your business will be less profitable than it could be.

On the other hand persuading a person to buy your crafts when they are already interested is much easier. It requires many skills but most of them are small and can be learned over your career.

The skills you will need include:

• correctly pricing crafts.
• using signage and tags effectively.
• proper displays.
• learning to make small talk that draws out the needs of your buyer.
• recognize the needs of your customers from clues they give in conversation.
• not over selling or underselling -giving the customer just the right amount of information so they don't feel overwhelmed or that their questions haven't been answered.
• recognizing when a buyer is on the fence-knowing what will get them off the fence and on the buying side.
• using coupons, discounts, sales, samples, upsells and downsells effectively to persuade an undecided buyer. Read Do Sales and Discounts Hurt Craft Show Sales?
• staying in touch with and following up with customers so they will buy for the first time, make repeat sales, and refer you to others.
• using your business documents, fliers, business cards, to sell more handcrafted works of art.
• asking for the sale and calls to action.

The difference between trying to create interest in your crafts and persuading people to buy your crafts is: You won't be able to create an interest in your crafts where there is none! You will be much more successful trying to persuade a large group of people who want, need, or like your craft already to buy.

The way I see if people really aren't interested in buying your artwork you have 3 choices:

1. Go where people are interested in buying your crafts.
2. Find a craft they are interested in buying and sell it.
3. Find a job working for someone else.

What do you think?

The biggest difference between a craft show and a trade show is the buyer who will walk into the show.

Buyers at craft shows are the end consumer or the person who will use the product. Many buyers at trade shows are representatives or agents of retail stores. They come to trade shows looking to buy large quantities of various items which will then be resold to the end consumer.

These representatives will expect to pay a much lower price (usually half) than the customers at a craft show because they will then need to mark up the price again to make a profit on the resale.

Things to Consider

1. Will I be able to make my product quickly enough to fulfill many wholesale orders in large quantities? Will I have space to create, pack and ship large orders?

2. What price should I charge for my product wholesale?

Most retailers will mark up the price you give them at least 30% and in some industries up to 700% is standard. The key to knowing what price to charge is to do some research.

Call the owner or manager of retail stores selling products like yours and tell them you are doing market research on your product. Ask them about the product you are considering, the usefullness of the product to their customers, the style and other design elements of the product. Ask what price they would expect to pay for such a product and what they would charge for similar products.

The most common rule for wholesale pricing is to charge two times the cost of producing the item (don’t forget to add costs not directly associated with the item like studio rent, travel, shipping, electricity). Expect retailers to at least double your wholesale price, when setting retail prices.

3. Am I able to create my product for this price and still make a reasonable profit on my business overall?

4. Do I want to offer:
• A discount for buying larger quantities?
• A guarantee, how long is my product guaranteed, and what is covered?
• Additional materials to help with the sale?
• Samples?
• Marketing materials?
• Case prices and packaging?
• Product buy back if it doesn’t sell?

5. Am I going to continue to sell my product retail? How am I going to set my retail price without competing with my wholesale buyers?

The Pros and Cons of Trade Shows
Pro: Larger orders
Con: Lower price

Pro: Larger orders
Con: How to produce those large orders in a short time?

Pro: Trade shows may target my exact industry or customers for instance a Toy Trade Show would be perfect for selling handcrafted toys.
Con: Cash Flow -Cost of preparation and having enough supplies on hand.

Pro: Less time spent selling. I now sell my product to one person whose job is to sell my product.
Con: Less connection/ feedback from/with the customer.

Pro: Selling to a wider audience.
Con: Chance of creating competition with people who bought from you. In essence competing with your self.