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Suzanne Schmid

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:
1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 4
Location: 4
Facilities: 2
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:
St. Charles is a great town. The usual ebb and flow of craft fair crowds was more extreme than other fairs I've done. I'd go hours without a sale and just when I would be thinking, "OK, not doing this show again," then a huge surge of buyers would come and I'd be busy for hours. Weird. This happened all weekend. Saturday night was surprisingly quiet but then Sunday afternoon was booming. So in the end it was decent.

Weather was fantastic (yay!) and that always helps. Nearby businesses are great and many give artists 10% discounts. Enthusiastic crowds.

Load-in and load-out was a piece of cake. Parking was kind of a walk from my booth though, but each morning I'd drive up to my booth, unload my heavy cooler, and then park and walk the 5 or so blocks back. No real hassle.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
No room between tents! My booth set-up requires me to come around my tent a lot (can't go through) and that's the fault of my own bad design but it was a real pain in the butt to have to shimmy through a 6" gap every fifteen minutes to help a customer. Glad my neighbor was a champ and easy-going lol.

ZERO VOLUNTEERS FOR BATHROOM BREAKS! I had to leave my tent AWOL many times to run into a nearby coffee shop. They did bring around water which was nice but what I really wanted was a potty break!

The fair provided a hand-delivered meal on Saturday night which I thought was so wonderful of them to do--then I tasted it and threw most of it away. :( I love that they're trying to cater to the artists but their $ and effort should be put into something more appealing.

Organizers seemed a bit...disorganized. (When I asked them where the closest restroom to my booth was, they suggested I could use the bathroom there at the check in point--which is a six block walk from my tent....really...!? Stuff like that.

Booth judges I realize are super busy but the judges spent all of 10 seconds in my booth and didn't see half the things I make.)

But in general, I do want to say that everyone was nice and the overall feeling of the event is great. In the grand scheme of things, my complains are tiny and the good outweighs the bad!

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
I feel like I lucked out in my booth location. The fair is layed out in one long line down several blocks of downtown. It is obvious that the center is the best place to be.

On one end you have loud bars that get kind of rowdy toward nightfall. On the other end you have the historical end and it's super quiet with few storefronts. Hard to say though--one photographer next to me barely made a profit, but others around me had a great show. It's the craft fair crapshoot at its finest....

Everyone has a number in their head that they'd like to make at a show to make it worthwhile. I'm not sure where mine falls on the spectrum, but if I can average $1,000 in sales each day, then I return to a show. Since I did just that, I will apply again. FYI, my average item price was low though. Most items I sold were in the $25-$40 range. Only one $90 necklace sold, the rest were all more affordable things.

Tim Self

This was my first time attending this show and must say Wow. Doing shows for only 5 years and this was my best show by far. As previously stated, there were "artists" there that definitely didn't fit the required criteria. Additionally, there were many artists who did not do well but many also sit across the street watching their booth without engaging the customers. Weather was perfect and the location is excellent.

Gary Simmons

Very nice group of supporters. Nice area. We love St. Charles. First time at show. Lousy crowds even with what seems to be a pretty aggressive marketing effort. The week before I was in Kansas city with 100 plus degrees, and had an awesome weekend of sales. great crowds. This week end with absolutely beautiful weather, the crowds were not as I expected and mostly center of street cruisers. The evening was taken up with evening party and drinking crowd at the bars that lined the street.
I know that this is the risk, and I know that some of the artist said they did ok, but I know that many that were on either side of me, didn't make space cost expenses. I asked them. This was the first show, in my three years of festivals that I didn't make at least my weekend expenses. I just barely made booth cost. I probably won't go back.
Also there were several exhibitors that I would question as to why they were there. One exhibitor was obviously a very commercial producer of a charm product with a huge listing of retail stores through out the county that carried his massed produced product, that he promoted in his printed material.
Another lady was assembling small necklaces from items that are bought from any number of over seas supplies that was clearly a craft. Another lady had a display tent with a blue plastic tarp on the roof attached to the tent with multi colored clips. Very unattractive. The same plastic I use to cover my hay bales at home. How did she pass the appropriate display and tent juried criteria. It didn't rain, none predicted so I couldn't figure out why she draped her tent that way.
I think that this show is a little over sold regarding its turnout, at this time.
Just my humble opinion and I'm sure others would have better comments.

Elizabeth Guittar

Show Name: Mosaics Missouri Festival
City and State: St. Louis MO
Your Medium: Glass
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: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 3
Location:4
Facilities: 4
Ease of Participating:4
Sales: 2
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:Easy load-in / load-out; nearby parking. Free coffee and water to artists.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: No storage space behind booths. Booths were on street with backs to sidewalk; people kept squeezing through the narrow space between booths to get from street to sidewalk or vice-versa. This made me nervous, but fortunately there were no bumping mishaps.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:Nearby artists complained of low sales. Probably not worth traveling far for this show, but worthwhile for other artists with no other options this weekend.

Additional Commentary on this Show: Saturday was a disappointment, with sales per hour no higher than Friday night. Only small sales (items <$50). Bigger items sold on Sunday. I would do this show again.

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