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Susan Bock

Thanks so much for your honest comments. Helps me a lot!

Tig Pollum

Medium: Jewelry
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show:
2014
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: $10,000+
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show:
1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 2
Location: 3
Facilities: 1
Ease of Participating: 1
Sales: 1
Overall: 1
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 501-10,000 people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Some of the other hand crafted vendors were pleasant to work with over a month period.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:
Where do I even begin? This entire show was a nightmare.

First of all, the promoter lied about the attendance numbers. He manipulated data in order to make this second year show look as impressive as his all ready established show.

We paid extra money to be inside the large vendor tent since we did not want to be outside on the inner harbor of Baltimore for a month. The tent was billed as being heated and this turned out to be another lie.

While the tent was slightly warmer than outside, it was never warm enough for the majority of vendors or patrons. People were leaving the tent to go home and get warm.

Part of the heating problem was that the bottom of the tent did not touch the ground so all those lovely cold, winter harbor winds could come right into the tent.

The tent also leaked, we had a hole in the roof directly above our booth and product and the staff refused to do anything until we suggested the temporary solution of putting duct tape over the hole.

The promoter also lied about what this show was. It was billed to us and to the general public as being a hand crafted, artisan marketplace. We were one of six vendors who actually made and produced their product. Two were hand crafted imports of high quality.

The rest of the roughly 38 non food vendors were all entirely buy/sell. The entire show looked like a flea market.

A good portion of vendors left after the first week because business was so bad. Out of the indoor vendors, 11 were selling jewelry because of buy/sell vendors putting out more stuff as the weeks went on.

We were under the impression that this show was invitation only, so despite not being juried, we were not worried until it was too late to pull out.

The staff, while sweet at times, were basically useless as a whole. They either were completely apathetic or claimed that their hands were tied and could not help us with any of our problems.

They did not care about other vendors making racist, anti-semetic, and homophobic remarks to other vendors and in earshot of customers.

There were a ton of other problems that are common at shows (live music being too loud, for example). These however were the most glaring of all of the issues that we faced over these past 28 days. My blood pressure and this form however cannot handle going into full detail about all of them.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show:
Don't. Save yourself money, heart ache, stress, resources, and general sanity and do not get involved with this show or the producer.

The big sister to this show in Philadelphia is supposedly a fantastic show, but we will never again do a show with German American Marketing, Inc.

Additional Commentary on this Show:
Seriously, avoid this show like the plague. Don't let your friends do this show. I cannot stress this enough.

We and almost all of the fellow vendors felt like we were scammed. This was written in hopes of preventing another artist from being taken advantage of.

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

See my blog on ArtFairInsiders.com for additional commentary on this Show

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