My First Show Experience! Flint Handmade Holiday Craft Market

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

Over the holiday weekend, I did my very first ever craft show at the Flint Handmade Holiday Market!  It was a one-day show just on Saturday.  It was fairly small, with about 40 artists. 

I was pretty nervous going into it, since I hadn’t set up a table before & I didn’t really know what all I would need to bring for the show itself.  However, I think it went fairly successfully for my very first show.

Since I had never worked a show before, I practiced my setup with the baskets & such that I had on hand or purchased from the dollar store & Target at home on my dinning room table.  My table is much smaller than the table I was getting at the show, so I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I wanted to come up with some ideas so I wasn’t scrambling when I got there.

The show was on Saturday, but they offered the opportunity to go there Friday night to set up.  I took advantage of this even though it was a bit of a drive up there because I wanted to be certain that if I got there & found out I was missing something important, I would have the rest of the evening to get whatever it was I forgot or needed for the next morning.

Setup took much less time than I was anticipating.  My mom came up with me (she worked the actual event with me as well) & she was able to help make sure everything looked all right.  They provided pizza for us, so we quickly unloaded our car & set up, then ate some pizza & went home to get rest for the next day.

The next morning we went to the show & all my things were there, set up, & ready to go!  No stress!  A couple of things that I think I did right… see those balls all over my table?  They are sparkly, and they attracted many people’s eye.  The kids loved them, the adults came over to see what they were, and then looked at my books, so that worked as I had hoped.  I also used one of my own coptic stitch books as my email sign up (you can sign up to be on my email list in the sidebar!) and I used one of my own case bound books to keep track of sales.  I think it was a good way to demonstrate my product without being super obvious about it.  I also made sure to have my business cards there.  I gave one to each person who made a purchase, and had a stack of the in a little soap dish for people to take.

As far as sales, it wasn’t a sell-out or anything, but I did surpass my official “goal” for the day, so that’s always a plus.  It took a little bit to make the first sale, which was kind of nerve wracking (what if no one buys any of my stuff!?!?), but once they started moving it got better.  It made me pretty excited for the next show in just another week and a half!  I’ll be at the DIYpsi fair December 8th & 9th.  If you’re local, come visit!!

Overall, I felt like it was a good first show.  I made a lot of new contacts, which is great since I’m kind of a shy person in real life.  I was able to say hi to the people who stopped by my table, and I’m a professional smiler (smiling is like my nervous tick, I’m always grinning ear to ear if I’m nervous) so I think I was friendly, but I know that part of my presentation probably still needs work.  But practice makes perfect right?  Looking forward to doing more of these shows!