This past weekend (Nov 7-9th) was the start of our craft show season (check earlier posts for the rest of the dates). These shows—especially the three days ones—are very grueling for us. Between setting up and standing on your feet for 10 hours a day for three days straight is not exactly our idea of fun. But really the reward for doing these shows is getting to meet all the admirers and fans of our designs. We love hearing the stories about how we have become a part of their holiday traditions. It does make it all worth it. We thought we would give you a little glimpse into what goes into one of these shows. We have been doing this show for the past five years and we find it very successful for us.
The event is held right in the heart of the Boston waterfront. Very easy to get to and plenty of parking lots.
We had a Thursday night check in time. It was cold and rainy. But the good thing with large shows is that you are able to drive your car into the building and unload. Here Paul is trying to set up our tent in our 10x10 space.
The manufacture of this tent says it's a one man set up. We still can't figure out how that could be.
We use the white tarps from the tent for the walls because you never know who or what is next to you at these shows. With our items on the smaller side you don't want them to get lost.
Past years we had a 8 x 10 rug, but rolling up a rug after 3 days of traffic was not good.
So we found these Flor tiles. They are 19 x 19 squares and work awesome! They are easy to transport and store, plus you can get them is all sorts of cool colors.
We have many trees to showcase our many collections of ornaments.
We offer many more designs at these shows than we can offer on the website. We have some for every season. We have a Halloween tree, a Valentine display, and some new and very limited holiday designs. We sometimes use the shows as a test market for new designs to see what sells and what doesn't. It's fun seeing the reaction of customers that have strictly bought online and visit us at a show for the first time. They are shocked about how many more designs there are.
The structure on the left (that looks like at three layer cake) was custom made for us.
The tiers rotate and it's able to hold lots of ornaments. We found an end table that we painted white and decoupaged on the top and front of the legs with blue and green tissue paper.
We love it and it also comes apart, which is always good to consider when doing these shows.
This show always draws a crowd. In the past up to 20 thousand people have come through the doors over the three days. It's great exposure for us, even though we question a lot of the other so called handmade crafts that are there.
When the 3 days are done we are burnt. Our feet are sore, and we are tired. It usually takes us a day to fully recover. We'll go back to the studio, regroup and see what ornaments were popular and which ones we need to create more of. We also receive a lot of interesting ornament requests, we take notes and will work on these for next season.
So that is a snippet of what goes into a show. Do you go to a crafts shows? If so why? Which ones do you attend and what do you like and don't like about going.
Come visit us at a show, we love to meet our customers. See this earlier post to mark your calendar on where we'll be in the next few weeks.
Until next time!
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