I spent Saturday vending at Not Yo Momma’s Craf t Fair, and event held at LITM, a bar in Jersey City. It was my first show by myself in two years, and also the organizers’ first craft fair.
The show was interesting, to say the least. Traffic was good and we ended up staying an extra hour because there were still lots of people around, although during that hour the crowd pretty clearly shifted from people who want to shop to people who want to drink. Overall the crowd wasn’t very spendy, people were balking at a friend’s prices for her prints… all of which were sub-$10. Surprising for a place where the average drink price is $9.
Sales-wise I did pretty well, and hit my target of 10x the booth fee. I nearly sold out of the Tinysaur Deluxe Kits, which was surprising, although I only brought ~10 of them. The checkout setup was a little clumsy… buyers had to get a sales slip, take it to the bar, pay, then bring it back to get their goods. It was a little aggravating to have to explain the somewhat complicated system to each customer, but it worked OK so I guess I can’t complain. Still, I would rather just have everyone pay me in cash. Much simpler.
Overall I’d say it was a success, and a nice practice for Spring Bada-Bing in Richmond next month. I mostly remembered how to sell people things, and got an idea of what was working / what wasn’t.