Monday, November 22, 2004

The Big Craft Show

(Cross-posted to two Yahoo groups)
Saturday's show went well. My sister and I made $541 in gross sales
with a $25 booth fee. The show was put on by the Gardeners' Market
(where we've been selling) for their regular craft vendors, and was
indoors (which was good because we got a dusting of snow). $175 of
the sales were of my sister's items, and $12 of them were my
7-year-old daughter's sachets which she made herself. She is selling
them to get money for Christmas presents and to save for college.

The things that sold were not what I expected. My sister's scarves
all sold, but none of her handmade books. I sold all three of the
ponchos I'd made. These I did not expect to sell because they were
priced considerably higher than our average purchase, and one was made
of wool that turned out to still be really scratchy even after it had
been dyed. But they were all snapped up in the first couple of hours.
Organic cotton mitts sold like hotcakes as expected, but not the soap
holders or organic turtle scrubbers (which had sold well before). The
only turtle scrubbers that sold were the sage green (non-organic)
ones. And I didn't sell much in the non-organic gift sets (mitt,
dishcloth, and scrubber), or the children's oven mitts, which were an
often-requested item at the Gardeners' Market. The only color of gift
set that sold well was the rainbow-colored items, which completely
sold out. The most surprising to me was that I didn't sell a single
one of those Christmas ornament-shaped scrubbers. Maybe it's just not
close enough to Christmas.

I'm going to put some things up on eBay, and I'm going to start my
BlogAds campaign this week for my website. I'm making a couple of nice
fat yarn buys, one for more yarn for ponchos and one of the organic
cotton yarn. I have another show in a couple of weeks so I've got to
get more of those ponchos and organic mitts made.