I just am recovering from a very long weekend at the Glenwood Springs Strawberry Days Festival. What a weekend! This was my first official art festival. I was so nervous coming up to it. There is SOOO much that goes into these things and I was just sure that I forgot something. Luckily, I didn't really find anything that I was missing. There were some lessons I took away from this show. Here is that list
1)I have a very supportive group of people that love me very much-expanding on that...My wonderful husband, three beautiful sisters, and future brother in law all came out to help and make sure everything ran smooth. My whole family are my biggest fans. My tent was supplied very graciously by my uncle (also a artist-very talented one). And I have friends that cheered me on through out the weekend. That helps big time! So thanks to all my homies :)
2) I don't believe that I would enter into this show again. Although it is a beautiful town, with great people, it wasn't the show for me. This show is Art/Crafts fair. That "/Crafts" part really changes the demographics. There are a lot of people looking to buy bbq sauce and lawn decor and not so much paintings. Noted
3)People want to be approached but not sold to. There is a fine line here and I think it may take a while to master this. I am no sales woman, so any tips people may have would be helpful. Even if your not into sales, let me know how you would like to be approached in this situation (maybe not at all). I want some feed back on how this looks best.
4)I don't like the way my pricing labels look. I used foam core, and Avery labels on top. They looked a little Janky. Is there anyone out there that has a better solution? My wonderful hubby hubby suggest black foam core with gold pen hand written. Not a bad idea! What else we got?
5)Set up early. If they give you the option to set up before, do it. They had asked if we wanted to the day before actual set up was scheduled. I told them no, I would just do it in the morning. We got there in the morning and my tent space had totally been surrounded by other tents. Booth set up is a lot harder without some elbow room.
6)Have a wide variety of priced items. I needed to make some pieces so people like, well me, can buy art.
Over all, it was a great first show. I sold some stuff, I got some commission interest, and some other great contacts. I feel so great about moving forward to the next one. Glenwood Springs is such an amazing town that I will be back soon, with or with out the festival. Now it is time to paint. I have lots of work to do before show number two. I will keep you posted.
www.zhibit.org/bighug
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