Sue's Family, Flowers and Fun Stuff: I Try My Hand At a Craft Fair (A catch up!)

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

I Try My Hand At a Craft Fair (A catch up!)

A catch up blog from last year!!

One of my friends from the crop decided that she was going to organise a craft fair and credit to her for organising it and doing it well. As I hadn't at that point returned to work I thought I would have a stall and see what would happen. My stall would sell artificial flower arrangements - as that would be the best way to show off my skills, generate some interest and hopefully raise my profile for my flower business - as it has now turned out selling flower arrangements is really more a hobby but more of that in another blog.

I came up with some simple designs, and made up some inexpensive arrangements - I think its vital to remember your audience when creating items to sell - you need to ensure you have a variety but all within the budgets of the clientele of the craft fair - so most of my designs were priced from around £4 to £12 with most at the lower end. Although I could have sold the poppies in the jug at least 6 times - market research done (!) - as we were near Mother's Day too - arrangements to suit that occasion were a priority - so lots of pink which is not my own personal preference.

I was pleased as I sold 4, although making money was probably the least important aspect of the event and I spent what I made buying cupcakes for home and some crafting materials from another fellow cropper - who has masses of stock from when she ran an online craft store. I was more interested in gauging responses and to see whether craft fairs would be a worthwhile avenue to pursue and what styles price ranges sold the best or market research as I would call it with my students now (ha ha!!). For me the jury is still out on that, but as other events have taken over at the moment not something I can devote much time to anyway.

One of the best outcomes for me was bumping into one of the fellow cub Mums who is a friend of the organiser too, so we are now good buddies and I'm looking forward (for Jamie) when her son joins Scouts too. So we spent a lot of the afternoon nattering and Jamie was happily nattering away to his old cubs buddy. Thank you to Jamie for the photos from my phone as I'd forgotten to take them at home!! An enjoyable afternoon.