Best of the Northwest Spring Art and Fine Craft Show Reviews..

Medium: 2D mixed media
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2015
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 1
Location: 2
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 1
Overall: 1
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
The hanger is a really cool place once you are there. Good facilities and ease of load in and out.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Poor attendance. This place is hard to get to and has no traffic other than people coming specifically to the show.

The signs are small and confusing. Many people attending the show had no idea where the entrance was.

The people seemed to be looking for lower priced goods. Most of the artists here were new to the show so that should tell you something. Not many artists returning to the show.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
I would avoid this show if you are a 2d artist. The clothing vendors looked like they did ok as well as some jewelers.

The people did not seem to be interested in art nearly as much as some other shows. At most shows I sell around 100-150 prints at a $45 price point. At this show I sold a total of 18! By far the worst show sales I have ever experienced.

Posted by: Lee White | 04/02/2015 at 01:15 AM

Show Name: Best of the Northwest Fall
City and State: Seattle, Washington
Your Medium: Fiber
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2012
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $2001-$5000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 1 (poor)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 3
Sales: 2
Overall: 2
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: The facility is gorgeous -- Pier 91 is large, well lit, clean and has amazing views of the harbor in all directions.

The folks who managed the show were very helpful and the pre-show materials were timely and well written.

It was well juried with a generally very high quality of art and craft available .

In fact, it had everything that seemed necessary for a great show. BUT.....

Bad Things about this Art Fair: Location, location, location - Pier 91 is on a Coast Guard Base with a guard post at the entry and a very small parking lot. As a result, potential fair goers needed to park some distance away and be shuttled into the show. Since it was a typical Seattle weekend with cold, drizzly rain interspersed with downpours, this was a deterrent.

On top of that, even long time Seattle folk couldn't find the parking lot, tucked away at the base of Queen Ann hill, a long way from any of the usual art venues. Three buddies, travelling separately, gave up on finding the place after wandering through railyards and industrial complexes. All three were Seattle natives and real smarties!

Finally, the signage for the show was sad...signs were small with greyed out graphics and very easy to miss.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: If this show is ever moved from the current location, we would definitely consider doing it again....there were many, many good aspects to it and we did low average on sales despite the drawbacks. For us, coming in from out of state, the cost outweighed the benefits.

If you are a local artist, and most folks there were, this show might work for you.

I think there was some variance in sales success per type of product and a number of artists said that they had made good contacts with wholesale options and potential future sales.

Posted by: Judith Daley | 12/09/2012 at 09:15 PM

Show Name: Fall Best of the Northwest
City and State: Seattle, WA
Your Medium: Wood
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2012
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: < $500
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 1 (poor)
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 1 (poor)
Sales: 1 (poor)
Overall: 1 (poor)
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: The venue itself is very nice nice if you're upstairs. All of the event staff were really nice and easy to work with.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: Several things I didn't like. They charged visitors for both parking and entry. The venue is difficult to find. Visitors have to take shuttle from parking to the venue, which discourages purchase of larger items. Although there were specific load in times, they put out to show up whenever, which made it a free for all. some better structure for load out, but not much. Crowds were way less than expected. I was disappointed they put sponsor booths by artists. I was downstairs, which seemed like being in a basement. The artist quality was as good as upstairs, but it seemed that the show was geared for those artists upstairs.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Don't. There are too many issues to work out to positively recommend this show.

Posted by: Todd Butler | 12/03/2012 at 08:38 PM

Show Name: Best of the Northwest Spring
City and State: Seattle WA
Your Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2011
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $2001-$5000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 3-5 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 5 (great)
Sales: 5 (great)
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Good
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: Two day show, short hours. Buyers have to pay to get in so no one really pays to walk around and look, but some do. Great sales for a two day show.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: In the past this show suffered low attendance and low sells, but this year some one turned the switch on and it was a great two day show.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Next year (2012) they are extending this show to a 3 day event. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. We'll see...
We are local so this show has low overhead for us. I have a friend who traveled 5 hours and had more expenses. He sold out of two of his products and made amazing money for a two day show.

Posted by: Robbie Curnow | 10/22/2011 at 12:22 AM

Show Name: Best of Northwest Spring
City and State: Seattle, WA
Your Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2011
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $2001-$5000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 3-5 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 4
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Good
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Indoor show during March. The new director continues to do a great job with marketing and getting the crowds to attend.

This was the first spring show we've been to where we didn't hear any artists complaining about lack of sales, a huge contrast to 2 years ago when artists had 0 return for the entire weekend.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Still not totally back to the "glory days" when this really was a premier show.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Great show to consider if you're local or have a place to stay so you can keep your expenses down.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
This is a show we'll continue to do, it's a good early spring show that has been profitable for us each year that we've done it and it's not as if there are a lot of choices in the NW in March.

Posted by: Ruth Finkenbiner | 06/25/2011 at 04:41 PM

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