Market Report

I had my second adventure as a vendor at Wiregrass Market this past Saturday.  (You can read about my December debut here).

The day had all the markings of a Potential Disaster.  Windy first thing in the morning.  The weather forecast of a 30% chance of light rain late in the afternoon proved to be, well, somewhat optimistic.

But, surprisingly, things went rather well.  For one thing, I wasn't twitching with nerves like the first time.  I was excited, certainly, but this time I knew what to expect and how everything was going to go.  That helped alot.  And in the few months that the market has been open (I was last there on Opening Day in December) there seems to have been enough community buzz generated about it so that people came specifically for that market, not just stumbling into it while shopping at the stores there.  So not only were there more people, but more people interested in the crafts.  And that added up to more customers and more sales, even though we ended up closing early due to rain.  And a big thank-you to my tent, which held up perfectly to everything Mother Nature threw at it.

I made some changes to my display.

   Craft show set up tutorials say to use a neutral colored table covering.  Isn't pumpkin orange a neutral color?  I really love it, makes everything pop against it.

  Office Lunch sets on the left, placemats on the right.

Something I noticed at both shows:   if the placemats are on the table they pretty much get ignored.  Time for a change of display.

Also:  think about what's up front.  Just about everyone who passed by stopped and fingered a selvage bath mat, which I had on top of the ladder.  That's fine:  touching things is part of selling.  But  alot of touching is one thing on a bath mat, and a whole other thing on, say, a $175 quilt.  That's why gloves are given out at quilt shows, right?  So I definitely want to keep the quilts hanging up.  The discerning customers on Saturday came in and looked at them and we had nice discussions about them.  So keep them hanging, just get a better system of hanging them.  I'm thinking about A Room of Quilts effect.
So when I woke up Sunday morning I had a Revelation about my display, and I knew exactly what I wanted it to  look like.  My husband and I went to Home Depot and figured it all out.  We're a good team:  I have the vision, and he's the one who figures out exactly how the vision is going to happen. I'm so excited to be doing my neighborhood market this Sunday to try everything out.  I'm not going to say any more, I'll post pictures from the new display, but I think it's going to be really good.