Northwest Folklife Festival Reviews.

Show Name: Northwest Folklife
City and State: Seattle, WA
Your Medium: Jewelry
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: 3-5 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great)4
Location: 4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 2
Sales: 3
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 50,001+ people

Good Things about this Art Fair: Attracts a large crowd, good artist support, coordination, no application fee. Generally good sales for objects that are easy to carry.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: 15% commission on sales over $700, wish there was a maximum cap on commission. Can end up being a very expensive show. It's 4 very long days and load out is horrendous.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: This is not a great show for everyone. Items that are small or easy to carry seem to do better than large 2D art work or pottery/ceramics. It's a grueling 4 day festival that attracts the best and worst of the locals plus tons of tourists.

Posted by: Ruth Finkenbiner | 06/15/2012 at 02:44 AM

Show Name: NORTHWEST FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL
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: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 3
Facilities: 2
Ease of Participating: 2
Sales: 2
Overall: 2
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 50,001+ people

Good Things about this Art Fair: Four days, long hours, passed out a ton of business cards and got a few good after show custom sells.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: This show is crazy, way too many people pushing by booths with no way to exit the flow to get in a booth. The show is a side event to the huge music festival. We were between a drum circle and bag pipes all weekend. Four days of really loud mix of music and pot smoke. Really not my style.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Be prepaided to pay a 15% commission.
Don't leave high dollar art in your booth. We remove all our inventory. People stay in the park all night wandering around.

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

Show Name: Northwest FolkLife
City and State: Seattle, WA
Your Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2011
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
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: 4
Sales: 2
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 50,001+ people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Part of a large cultural festival, attracts high attendance. Relatively easy load in if you do the Thursday night load in.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Very expensive, 300-400 booth fee plus 15% commission for sales over $700. A very long, four day show.

Very difficult load out, either you have to hand dolly everything a fair distance or wait until after 10 PM to get your vehicle on the grounds.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Organizers and volunteers do a great job.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
This year's sales were our lowest ever, several other artists had the same result. This year's show also seemed to attract a much younger crowd on Friday and Saturday which is not a great buying demographic, sales were definitely better Sunday and Monday, but still lower than previous years by at least 1/3.

Posted by: Ruth Finkenbiner | 06/25/2011 at 05:24 PM

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