Southwest Arts Festival Reviews..

Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2018
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501 - $2,000
Price Range of your Work: $45 - $700
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
3-5 times
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall: Forever...
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 3
Location: 5
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 5
Sales: 2
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Empire Polo grounds are fantastic and the chamber of commerce is very well organized.

What could this Art Fair have done better?:
They charge $13 entrance fee and 15% vendor fee. I think this is pulling down the show.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Local artists with Southwest themes may do well.

Posted by: Lyle Ang | 02/17/2018 at 10:28 AM

Medium: Wood
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2017
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $500
Price Range of your Work: $150 to $2,000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall:
3-5 years
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 3
Location: 5
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 5
Sales: 1
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Setup on Wednesday was the easiest I have ever had. Organization was excellent and a beautiful venue.

This was a 4 day show that should be a 2 or 3 day show. Somewhere around 150 artists.

Traffic on Thursday was fair but only artists that were making sales were for items under $100 with a few larger items.

Friday, made the first sale. Traffic fairly good but sales were slow from what I saw and my first sale was 1 hr prior to close.

Saturday traffic was very busy and some artists with large art work made sales, most with desert scenes. No sales for me until near close, finally made a sale.

Sunday slow until noon then traffic picked up but no buying energy.

This is a very nice show, great promoters, volunteers, nice amenities (daily coffee, snacks, fruit, donuts, raisins, dates, water. Volunteers delivering water and cookies all day.

Organizers were the best, venue was the best I have ever been at. Quality of artists was very high, the number was around 150 which is about the perfect size IMO.

Promoter is the chamber and did heavy advertising on TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards over a fairly long period of time. Ads were in some markets in drivable communities like San Diego, Los Angeles and also as far as Phoenix .

The booth fee and commission rate of 15% is very fair based on the quality of this art festival.

What could this Art Fair have done better?:
2 day show instead of 4 day.

The URL of your profile on ArtFairInsiders.com.
http://www.artfairinsiders.com/profile/RobertJohnson

Posted by: Robert Johnson | 02/19/2017 at 11:22 PM

The 2016 Southwest show was a big negative. 1. the attendance was down overall. 2. The chamber reduced the isles so only one van could be there. [big mistake] reason b/c the chamber saw last year artists fighting over car place.] so the chamber penalizes all artist just because two got into an argument. 3. there was 60-75 feet open on both the north and south sides of the artists booth On the north side there were chairs to sit down on while your eating. on the south side there were 7 extra vendors an art gallery, Golf cart sales company, were the two I saw mostly. The chamber greeted us with great enthusiasm but told us their were secret shoppers in the crowd to see if there weary artist cheating on the sales....VERY NAZI LIKE!!!

the chamber refused to send out tickets to the artists so we could give the customer free attention . told us we had to give the chamber the names so they did not have to print $$$ out tickets -- pretty cheesy to me

GOOD WEATHER UNTIL the winds started on Sunday at 40 knots. when the chamber closed down the show.

Overall rating for this 2016 show minus -2

Posted by: Bill Daniels | 02/05/2016 at 01:07 PM

Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2015
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $500
Price Range of your Work: $25-$1600
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall: 2-3 years
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 4
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 5
Sales: 1
Overall: 2
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Attendance was pretty solid, quality of the exhibitors was good.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Sales were abysmal, the crowd was also very old. I sold one very small piece all weekend.

Also, the show was enormous, too big to see everything reasonably.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Skip it!

Posted by: Casey Sharpe | 11/19/2015 at 11:46 PM

Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2015
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
Price Range of your Work: 24-1100
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Number of Years You have been doing Art Fairs overall: 3-5 years
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 5
Facilities: 5
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 2
Overall: 2
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
The grass and the volunteers

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
The attendance, the quality of art, the sales

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Beware

Posted by: Sharon Kaplan | 08/03/2015 at 11:57 PM

City and State: Indio Ca
Your Medium: Other
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2014
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) 3
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 4
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Great
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Although art shows have become a event to go to this January provides a higher income clientele.

Although 2014 show it rain part of the day, many people still came out.

Its three event

Promoter has a wonderful lob the promoting, advertising to show; Even will their advertising ~ you still need to promote to your clients.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
In the three years I done this show I had no complaints about the location, the size of the show, or anything from the Show goers into this region. MY sales increased every year.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
With any show You need to work the show. If you bring a book to read at the show your doomed to begin with. Talk to every one, interact with everyone.

Posted by: Bill Daniels | 04/08/2014 at 01:46 PM

Show Name: Southwest Art Fest
City and State: Indio CA
Your Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2014
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $2001-$5000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 2-3 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 3
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: Not really sure.

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Load in and out is well organized and easy .. The show is organized and flows well the volunteers are great . The area is great and so is the weather (well this year). The booth fee is low $250 but they talk a commission on the sales.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Attendance seemed to be down this year sales were higher last year and it rained . The crowd this year seemed to be A LOT older. The director changed, they had a misprint on the date in the paper.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
The show is in January which is nice will probably go back again

Posted by: Tamara Kelly | 04/08/2014 at 01:38 PM

Show Name: Southwest Art Festival
City and State: Indio, CA
Your Medium: Photography
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2014
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $5001-$10,000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 4
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: Not really sure.

Good Things about this Art Fair:
The Polo grounds are a wonderful setting for an art show. The people do come out for this show, and it brings people with money who are on vacation or at their second home. I like the fact that booth layout was done in 4 booth squares, which gives everybody a corner. (we had a double booth so that gave us a double corner.) Weather was great this year and my neighboring artists were super friendly and helpful to me as a new comer.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
To many artists. The choices over whelmed customers. A lot of "be-backs" I didn't like the 15% commission on top of booth fees, made the show expensive to do. Load in and load out is a little tricky. We were lucky to be by a gate in the fence which got opened after the show stopped, I was able to cart out to my trailer.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Be ready to ship large pieces and try to get a booth location by entrance gate.
Additional Commentary on this Show:
Overall a good show and I will do it again if I'm in the area.

Posted by: Tom Clements | 04/08/2014 at 01:35 PM

Show Name: Southwest Arts Festival
City and State: Indio, CA
Your Medium: Fiber
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) 3
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 1 (poor)
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 10,001-50,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: The location of this show is beautiful, located on the Empire Polo Club grounds. The weather could not have been nicer. Attendance seemed good. Lots of nice original art.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: Nothing specific, other than next time I will request a booth closer to the entrance. I saw one buy-sell vendor

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: request a booth space in the first 5 rows

Posted by: Jenni Summers | 03/01/2012 at 03:19 PM

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