American Craft Council Atlanta Show..

Show Name: American Craft Council Show in Atlanta
City and State: Atlanta, Georgia
Your Medium: Fiber
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2013
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: Rather not say
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 10+ times!
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 3
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 5 (great)
Sales: 3
Overall: 3
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Okay
Estimated Attendance: Not really sure.

Good Things about this Art Fair: Great location and the Craft Council always seems to be trying to increase attendance. This year, the show ran at the same time as the Flower Show and if you bought a ticket for the flower show, you were given a free pass into the Craft Show. Parking is plentiful and free and load in and out is easy.

Bad Things about this Art Fair: Even with a large attendance for both shows, I am not sure the flower attendees are really the craft show customer. After they were able to buy seeds and brooms next door, they walked around our show and seemed to only want cards and information......like we were distributors of our items and not the makers and creative minds behind what we were showing. The large central display area devoted to the interior designers was supposed to highlight the crafts available at the show. I saw no indication of artist names or booth numbers and very little actual craft in their displays. Plus they stood in the midway to talk people since their displays were roped off. This caused traffic jams and made it difficult for the surrounding artists. The idea of showing people how craft fits into a room is a good idea, But don't give it center stage and require a percentage of craft in each display plus recognition of the contributing artists.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Be sure to work your mailing list for this show. People in this area have allot of options every weekend and they can easily miss an ad in the paper or radio advertising. Complimentary passes to your best customers is always a plus.

Posted by: Candiss Cole | 04/06/2013 at 01:49 PM

Show Name: American Craft Council Show Atlanta
City and State: Atl. Ga.
Your Medium: 2D mixed media
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2013
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) 5 (great)
Location: 5 (great)
Facilities: 5 (great)
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 5 (great)
Overall: 5 (great)
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Good
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair: Beautiful venue, easy load in. ACC joined with the Atlanta Garden Show which was next store and did a two for one- tons more people on Friday and Saturday. People came to buy. Good sinage and advertising. Free bags provided for buyers (nice touch).

Bad Things about this Art Fair: The Preview Party is an event that has most of the artist's at the show doing a collective groan. Seems that most viewers were there for the food and drinks but we all have seen that before. Load out was a bit hard -took me 21/2 hours- even though they had people directing traffic the two bays to drive into to load were very small and there was a long line. Class show mainly because ACC is a class act!

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Try to load in on Wednesday- easy and avoids the crazy Thursday congested load in. It's worth it and hotels are relatively inexpensive in Atlanta.

The set up was available for two days and I loaded in and set up on Wednesday and it was the easiest load-in I have experienced in a long time. The Center provides large rolling dollies and it was possible to load in pro-panels, lights and all my work in two loads...that's a nice day for me. I think many were able to take advantage, as there must have been at least ten dollies available. The ACC people running the event were very accommodating and helpful, plus it's a nice plus to have bags for customers provided. This year the ACC joined with the Atlanta Flower Show for a two for one price entry fee which really benefited all the artists' involved in the show. I heard that there were more viewer's on Friday then there were for the whole event last year and it certainly seemed like it. Saw a lot of bags and big items going out the door. It was a long day as the show started at 9a.m. for wholesale and went until 8p.m. Saturday was another really busy day but I think that there were so many fiber and jewelery people, that it seemed that it might have thinned out their customer base. The people of Atlanta are loyal to the artist's they have purchased from before and even though I was not at the show last year, people that had seen me at the 2011 Show remembered and purchased from me, which was really a surprise for me. I talked to other artist's that said that was the way it worked in Atlanta.(sweet!). Sunday the show started later and since it was St. Patrick's Day and the first really warm day in quite a while in Atlanta, the crowds were pretty light all day and I personally had a pretty dead day. It was slow getting out of the Galleria. Load-out was a free for all and not very well planned as there was only two load-out gates and everyone was trying to get out at the same time. It took me two and a half hours and I was lucky. I do have to say that getting everyone in and out without any traffic jams or wrecks was handled by really nice people and there were many of us that were frazzled by that time. They were extremely pleasant. Overall the show was a pleasure to do, there is really something to southern hospitality and no one can deny that most of all, ACC is a class act.

Posted by: Marge Luttrell | 03/24/2013 at 05:44 PM

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.