Downtown Sarasota Art Festival Reviews'

Medium: 2D mixed media
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2015
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: 4
Facilities: 1
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:
-fairly easy load in and out
-good weather in Florida this time of year
-nice location in town

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
-non existent staff/volunteers
-extremely bare bones
-VERY poor sales.

Seriously, people barely even looked. I have never been so in the red for a single show in my entire career.

-the porta-potty company they hired didn't really clean or stock the facilities, and there were far too few for the crowd and amount of artists.

None of the facilities had hand sanitizer, and I had to buy a pocket pack of tissues for toilet paper.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
This is just not a good show. There's no other way around it. Everyone I spoke to had very poor sales.

Sarasota has an incredibly conservative and elderly population, despite the fact that the Ringling College of Art and Design is here. This doesn't inherently mean poor sales, but if you do any type of art that doesn't revolve around beaches or witty slogans and song lyric "folk art" then don't bother.

Be prepared for folks who'll spend hundreds on a sweat shop made name brand purse while scoffing at pieces priced over $100.

Overall, the attendees didn't know much about art other than needing to fill a space on their wall.

I saw two staff members from HAE during the entire show, and one interrupted me while I was talking to a customer to "take a photo for Howard". No amenities, no nothing.

Posted by: “name withheld by request” | 02/20/2015 at 11:55 PM

Show Name: Downtown Sarasota Art Festival
City and State: Sarasota, FL
Your Medium: Wood
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2012
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $501-$2000
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 5-10 times
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 5 (great)
Sales: 3
Overall: 4
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 50,001+ people

Good Things about this Art Fair: Very well organized, advertised, and run. H.A.E. does a great job with their events. Large crowds in attendance.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: Sarasota has been hit pretty hard with the economic downtown and sales there have been off for the last few years. They also have some kind of event it seems like every weekend in the winter months. We had at least 6 or 8 sales that were set to happen and then could not close on them despite our best efforts.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: You have to be on your best sales game, the crowds are there, then it's up to you to close the sale.

Posted by: Steve Cebula | 03/01/2012 at 04:59 PM

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