dappledsky. may 2012. selling out

©Deborah Nicklin for DappledSky.com May 2012 of 8

Selling Out! With the plethora of vintage fairs, handmade fairs, art and craft fairs, home and garden fairs, pop-ups and such like out there, there is an abundance of new places for makers to sell their wares. Sounds great!

Think about the amount of people involved, just within your own local circuit. All those events vying for your attention, three or four times each month. Within those events there are lots of makers all wanting to get your attention. Now add to that all the online opportunities to buy or sell art or craft or vintage like virtual craft fairs and regular websites like Folksy, Etsy, Ebay, plus online shops attached to galleries and makers blogs.

Sounds great at first but if you visit the shows in your local area, after a few times, do you start to see similar faces? The same customers, the same stallholders? They all do the rounds, so the event name and building might be different but the day kind of looks the same. Understandably makers and vintage stall holders are all trying to find the magic place, somewhere for their wares to reach the right customers, but with so many events available and most offering a similar format, it can start to feel like itʼs nothing special anymore. Too much of the same is diluting the market.

But … it's great when you go to an event thatʼs full of energy and you feel that you have had a new experience, something different from the one before. Rather than seeing the same faces and wares just positioned differently around the room on trestle tables, it's brilliant if


the room is full of a wide range of makers and sellers with all sorts of crafts and vintage, offering a wide price range for different tastes and pockets. It's even better when the organisers have put their own stamp on the gig, making sure that the customer can see the difference and knows that they have come to their particular event - not just another tabletop sale.

People want a mixture of experiences and although that does require more effort from the organisers it doesn't always require a lot of money. That small difference will make the potential customer want to stay longer and browse, soak up the atmosphere, take part in a workshop, catch the buzz of room, tell friends about it. You don't have to have lots of different things happening, just something memorable. People could stay for a few hours not just a few minutes, feel the vibe, chat to makers, listen to the musicians ... and actually buy something!

We all know that people have a limited amount of spare cash these days compared to a few years ago. So buying a new piece of artwork or a vintage handbag isn't always a decision taken lightly, not like before. If itʼs not essential you really need to be tempted, or perhaps you have a reason to buy it. Maybe you have a dear friend that you want to buy something unique for, so you are on a mission to find something special and it has to be ʻspecialʼ. That's what people want.

Understandably makers are definitely feeling the pinch too as they sit and watch customers look at their stall. They watch the customer give them a shy smile, maybe pick up something and say “Hello”, give it a quick look, check the price tag and walk on by. Makers feel downhearted and wonder how they can make enough sales to at least cover the stall fee! So they start to think "Maybe people don't like what I make. Do they think my work is too expensive? Why do they buy his things and not mine? Why are they not buying that necklace ... it's so cheap, I'm not even making any profit on it.”


It's good to assess your competitors and see the reactions of your customers, but when you just start to get glum about it and settle for the lowest common denominator, that's when the rot sets in. Makers and sellers need to stay positive. You need to value your work and skills and think what you should do about it - reassess. Maybe this fair isnʼt the one for you, maybe another event would be better, another location, different faces, different customers with a bit more cash. Maybe youʼve got some ideas to help the organizer to make it better.

Realistically, makers can't afford to keep buying new materials and keep trying out new stock, so they might start to lose confidence and fall into the traps of down pricing to compete, using cheaper materials, or copying what other stalls seem to be selling. Makers begin to make things they donʼt even like to make a quick sale. They lose their creative drive their passion, their ideas and even decide to pack up the dream.

Thatʼs when things begin to stagnate. The market stalls all start to look similar and the hobby-makers start to move in, even worse the people who buy the mass produced cheap candles and just put hand written tags on them, selling them cheap as chips! The hobby artists who give us decoupage recycled birthday cards for £1 and plastic button brooches and beaded necklaces all for under £3 make a tiny profit on materials but donʼt take into consideration the time they spent making and going to buy the supplies, updating the blog page, and other overheads. They are just creating rods for their own back. Keeping the market prices low just copying patterns out of knitting books and other designers work. At first it seems to sell with friends and family and the older generation maybe but customers even get bored of bargains.

What does that really offer the customer? Is it a bargain or just throwaway tat? Easily replaced by some more cheap tat from another bargain shop. They do have their place, they do make sales, but donʼt


letʼs kid ourselves that they are offering us anything dynamic. It looks like a tabletop sale at a school fun day, itʼs certainly not a Parisian flea market or a treasure trove collectorʼs fair or a vibrant and contemporary craft fair.

Event organisers and stallholders need to offer value in other ways and up their game. Truly creative makers with fresh ideas need to stick to their guns and ride out the bumpy economic slump. If they offer good packaging and quality handmade unique items, if the stall is laid out well, if the maker is friendly, if they chose the right gigs where the atmosphere is buzzing ... the customer actually will want to buy their £20 brooch compared to the £1 brooch on the other stall.

Why?

Because everything on this stall is so much better. It makes us feel better to look at beautiful things. The quality stands out from that other cheap and frankly quite forgettable stall, with the plastic buttons glued onto brooch pins and cheap Granny necklaces. This stall is different. This brooch is unique and they will feel great when they wear it. They donʼt want to feel like a bargain hunter, they want to feel fabulous!

Also think what happens afterwards. People like to support an emerging handmade-entrepreneur. They would be happy to give their friend this as a gift and include a business card, spreading the word about the maker and the fair, because they know the friend will be wearing something unique and they won't be looking on a makerʼs blog to see that their present only cost a measly quid!

In actual fact when they buy that brooch, they feel that it's worth more than £20 ... and it probably is. Customers need to appreciate how long it takes to create, and makers need to value their time and skill.


Just think how much does the customer gets paid per hour to do their job? Why should a maker or an artist get paid a pittance? Donʼt just look at the materials. Think of the time and skill involved.

OK. In some places the £1 brooches do fly out and people canʼt afford to buy the £20 brooch, no matter how much they like it, but think. Would you rather make things that you donʼt like just to say youʼve sold well, or would you rather make things that are creative and speak about you and show off your skills? Donʼt dumb down. Stick to it!

It does all depend on the location of the event too. With the right approach towards customers and on a good day, the maker could perhaps sell the same item for double or triple the price, in a good location where local people have more spare income and appreciate the skill and processes involved. Where they can afford to pay for unique items, retro glamour, beautiful art and bespoke and one-off handmade crafts.

The support between makers and event organisers on the circuit is mutually beneficial. It gives everyone a feel good factor. Craft and vintage has been doing the rounds for a while now, so maybe event organisers need to be a bit more selective about the type of stalls they are inviting to the venue. They want to make sure their events gain a great reputation for being one of the best and that customers will return because they know they will see quality wares and have a great experience.

In recent years people have obviously turned to making or selling for an extra income, which always happens during times of economic depression. They go to their local fairs and donʼt travel too far afield, so you get to see their faces time and time again. People think it will make them some ʻeasy moneyʼ, but they often offer things cheaply


and poorly made. So maybe the well established local makers, whose work you would love to see at your local fairs, have decided not to sell to the home-crowd anymore. What a loss. They could be supporting the local economy and making it a vibrant place to live, get people to visit and spend some cash.

Same with vintage stall owners. Some are fantastic magpies and collect amazing second-hand kitsch and retro-chic to showcase on their stall. They display dresses and hats so you can see them, they wear the gear themselves and they make sure there are mirrors and places to try clothes on. They travel the length and breadth of the country selling what they have to offer.

They are not prepared to undersell themselves and why should they? They are even prepared to pay hefty stall prices if they know the event has a great track record and it is going to be worth it and they will take that risk or just decide to sell online more.

Have you encountered these stall holders? A funny bunch! They sit hiding behind a barricade of shelving, whilst some of them glare at you as you look at their stall (not even cracking a smile). Some just stare vacantly through you as though you arenʼt even there, some sit reading a book ignoring you all together, and on some stalls they are invisible. You can't even find the stall owner and nothing seems to have a price on it! Some stalls are cluttered and spaces are so small that you can't get more than two customers in the space at once, so you just walk past to the next one.

These bad habits and cheap practices create one thing, a downward spiral! In the long term it supports nobody, it wonʼt bring customers back or new people in from further afield. It wonʼt support the creative economy. Fairs need to get their good local quality makers back and real vintage magpies, get them selling locally again to raise the game


for everyone, get a good reputation and bring some cash back into the local economy. After visiting the fair people often walk around the nearby shops and it has a knock on effect for local businesses. They visit a gallery, eat at a café, and go to the garden centre or hardware store before getting in the car and coming home.

There really are some wonderful fairs out there and they make you feel welcome or excited when you step through the door. They pull out the stops and make you want to buy.

People do want to buy quality, be it art, craft, vintage, rustic bread or fancy cup cakes. They want an experience too. They want a lovely day out, something different - that's why they came to an art and craft fair and not to Poundland or Primark!

Treat your customer to a special day and they will open up their vintage leather wallets and cute little kitsch purses and spend some money. They might be adventurous and have a ʻvintage make-overʼ, buy a box of cup cakes for friends in the office and give them some flyers or business cards – itʼs all good PR! So please don't let us walk through the room like zombies, bored and uninterested. Don't show us the same old things time and time again in cramped spaces with no atmosphere. Come on! Get the flags out! (and not just the bunting). Have the vintage hair salon, a fabulous 50's tea party, lindy hoppers, an Elvis impersonator walking around for photos. Have demos and workshops, a storyteller reading children vintage tales, a retro-DJ spinning some discs on the gramophone, a row of classic cars or scooters parked outside and people dressed in vintage clothes handing out flyers as we leave... anything ... but please don't just give us the same old same old.... please!

It takes effort and people power to create a network of folks willing to pull a good gig together. Support each other and it will pay off. When


the customers are leaving and the stallholders are counting up their pennies wouldnʼt it be great if they actually found themselves “selling out” – in the positive sense of the phrase.

We really do want to buy, thatʼs why we came … and we feel a bit disappointed when we leave empty handed. Itʼs true. We are being selective with our spare cash but we want to walk away with something, we want to buy into the experience, we want to feel fabulous, we want to feel like we have explored and found something nobody else has seen and once we have left the event. Maybe in a few days time we would love to have memories of seeing a friend open that present and exclaim "Wow!" when they see what we bought for them. We want to tell them where we bought it and what a great day we had.

Maybe weʼll go together next time!