If you do craft fairs, you already know how much work (and stress) goes into making as many sales as you can on the day.
You need to make sure you’ve got enough stock, but not too much.
You need to make sure your prices are profitable (and all of the worry that goes along with that).
You need to budget for the stand fee and all of the other expenses.
You need a display that looks as professional as a shop, and that draws people in.
You need to pack the car (and not forget anything), charge the card reader (and your phone) and sort out your cash float.
That can be hours of preparation before you even leave the house.
It’s a lot, but after a few shows you tend to get pretty organised with it and stop doing things like turning up at a show without your stock (yes, I did that)
But if maximising sales on the day is all you’re trying to do at a fair, you’re missing out on a big opportunity and leaving a lot of money on the table.
Let me explain.
In-person selling is one of the most high-value activities you can do for your handmade business, but it often doesn’t feel that way.
That’s because the whole process of just getting there, getting set up and being brave enough to even talk to people is a lot of work.
It’s the work that HAS to get done.
But there is a whole second layer of returns the day can give you, if you are aware of it and you build it into your craft fair preparation.
Marketing a handmade business is a long game, and most of the value from any marketing you do (including craft fairs) shows up over months rather than on the day itself.
A fair can give you three things on top of the day’s sales: customer research, audience growth, and sales from the people who already follow you.
Each one is worth real money, and most of the time the only reason it gets left on the table is that there isn’t any strategy in place to capture the opportunity.
The good news is that most of the extra work to do this is small and it stacks onto what you’re already doing.
The first missed opportunity: customer research
When you take part in a craft fair, you have something incredibly difficult to replicate online. A full day of real people, in front of your work, telling you what they think about it.
Even if you only remember half of what gets said, it’s more customer research than a year of Instagram analytics or requests for comments will give you.
What to listen for:
- The conversations people have with each other about your work.
How do they describe it, who do they think of buying it for, what do they like about it (or not) - The first question most people ask
This is usually good content for blog articles, emails, social media and your FAQs section (if it’s a practical question about prices or sizes, your display might also need adjusting - Who shows interest and who doesn’t respond.
What can you learn about them from how they dress, how they present themselves, what other shopping bags they have, how they interact with other people. This is your ideal customer research - What people pick up or touch
Any experienced standholder knows that when people touch something or pick it up, they’re more engaged and more likely to buy than those who hold back. What can you learn about the display and the products that invite touch? - The gift stories people tell you.
People will very often tell you who they are buying a product for and why. Maybe it’s for their sister who has just bought a new house, or their friend who’s been having a tough year. That perspective is very useful for your marketing.
Keep a notebook behind your stand. At any quiet moment, scribble a few lines about what you’ve just heard. Don’t trust yourself to remember at the end of the day, because you won’t.
One afternoon of this can change how you write your next product description, how you photograph your next collection, and how you talk about your work in your next email.
It is incredibly valuable, and it can translate into better online sales for months or years afterwards, so don’t skip this because it feels like one more thing to do.
The second missed opportunity: audience growth
Collecting email addresses is the single biggest leverage activity you can do at a fair or show, but a lot of makers aren’t doing it.
Often this is because of one (or more) of a few common worries, all of which sound perfectly reasonable, but actually mean that you’re limiting your growth and not using your shows as strategically as you could.
“I don’t have room on the table.”
When your table or stand is small, every centimetre can feel like precious space. If you can’t fit all of your products on the table, why would you make space for an email book or sign up sheet?
Because your email list is the audience you’ll be able to market to next month, next season, and next year, without paying another stand fee.
An extra sale or two from putting more stock in that space might give you money today, but the customers that sign up for emails are your most interested buyers, and they can earn you much more, especially if they go on to become repeat buyers over the next year.
Of course, you can keep your table for stock and have a clipboard sign-up sheet instead, but you need to make sure you’re being incredibly proactive about asking people to join your list.
That’s also uncomfortable for a lot of makers, so if you think you won’t do it, or won’t do it well, just make room for the signup sheet on the table.
“I don’t want to ruin the look of my stand.”
A beautifully styled stand really does help sales, and it’s important in making your stand look like a real shop, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of the additional, repeat sales you can get from customers who sign up to your emails.
Instead of skipping the sign-up sheet altogether, think about making it more aesthetically pleasing, but bear in mind that when you make something look too perfect, your customers might also get worried about ruining the look.
That means they may not sign up to your list at all, and they may also be afraid to touch things.
The middle ground of something that looks carefully considered, but isn’t too perfectly styled, is usually a good option.
And it’s always a good idea to add a couple of email addresses to the sheet yourself, just so people don’t worry about being the first one. Make them something you’ll remember so that you can easily exclude them when you add the emails to your list.
“I need to give people a reason to sign up, and I can’t think of anything”
You don’t.
A lot of makers get really worried about what they need to give people to make them want to sign up.
Prize draws, free gifts, discount codes. These all come with logistics that can feel overwhelming, and costs that might be unaffordable.
And you don’t need them. If you already have an incentive for joining your list and you want to use it at the show, that’s great, but if you haven’t, don’t assume that you need one, or that it needs to be something big.
Most people who enjoyed your work are happy to give you their email address if you just ask them. The reason to sign up is just that they like your work and want to hear from you again.
So instead of saying “Would you like to get my newsletter?” you can say “Would you like to get my emails? They’ll keep you up to date with my upcoming shows and the new products I’ve got.”
You’re highlighting a benefit to them, which is that they get reminded later and can find you again.
So if you want to offer something like a discount code for free shipping, you can do it, but if you don’t have time to set it up, don’t let that stop you from collecting email addresses.
“Should I have a book, or a clipboard, or an iPad or a box? I’m worried about privacy”
The mechanics of how you collect email addresses matter a lot less than you think.
Whether it’s an open book, a clipboard, a box, or an iPad, it doesn’t really matter.
Here’s what is important to get right:
- It needs to be obvious.
It’s sitting in a place people can see, with a sign or label they can read from a step or two away. - It’s easy to fill in.
They can write it down themselves, or they can tell you and you write it down for them. Either is fine. - You’re proactive.
Even if it’s a book on the table, you ask people to sign up as often as you can. You don’t wait for people to notice it.
The only thing I’d avoid is using a QR code as the only way to sign up, just because it’s less accessible to everyone and it’s giving people an extra step to consider.
Some people don’t know what to do with a QR code, some don’t want to get their phone out mid-fair, and some can’t be bothered with the extra steps. It feels like the easier option for the maker, but it can mean fewer signups.
A good middle ground is to have a QR code, just not as your ONLY way to sign up.
And what about privacy?
While it’s important to be careful with customer data, in my experience makers worry far more about this than is reasonable for the risks involved.
The risk of someone harvesting email addresses at a craft fair is low, because it would be very inefficient for spammers to acquire email addresses in this way. The small numbers of signups are important to us, but not useful to them.
Just take some sensible precautions like removing the book or signup sheet overnight or when the stand is not manned.
If customers express to you that they don’t want to write their emails into an open book then you can collect that person’s email privately, or think about bringing a sealed box where people write their emails on slips that get posted into the box.
But generally, this is something that makers spend too much energy on. The most important consideration is what is going to lead to the most email signups, not worrying about what ifs.
The third missed opportunity: sales from your existing followers
A lot of makers rely solely on footfall generated by the fair organisers, mostly because marketing the fair to your audience feels like one more job to do.
But it can be really valuable to get your own customers to the show as well.
Every email you send and every post you make in the week before the fair does two jobs at once. iIt brings the people local to the show through the door to buy, but it also increases your chances of selling to other customers who aren’t local and won’t be attending.
The people who already follow you are often the most likely buyers at a fair. They’ve seen your work online, thought about buying, and an in-person chance to see it and pick it up is often what makes the difference.
Their presence also creates a busier, more attractive stand that is more likely to attract the attention of passing strangers as well.
If you’ve hesitated to mention a fair because it felt too salesy to keep talking about it, remember that when we were asking people to sign up, we told them that we would be letting them know about events.
This is literally what they signed up for.
And if you’re worried about annoying people who live too far away to attend the show, reconsider your perspective. I frequently get emails from brands and makers that are taking part in shows that are not local to me. Instead of annoying me, these emails generally provide a reminder that they exist, and prompts me to have a look at their online store.
I’m sure it will do the same for many of your subscribers too.
After the fair
The work isn’t finished when you’ve unloaded the car back home, and put your stock away.
Within a few days, while the memory is still fresh, email the new subscribers you collected.
Introduce yourself properly, remind them where you met, and point them to your online shop or your next fair. If you leave it for three months, many of them will have forgotten they ever met you, and that increases the likelihood of spam complaints and unsubscribes.
Make detailed notes about the fair with the things you learned, as well as the numbers.
If this is a repeat fair for you, compare your notes with the ones you took last time.
Did the day deliver any of the benefits you need to see?
- Sales on the day (or prompted by the day)
- Customer research
- Audience growth (measured by email addresses collected)
If it didn’t, and you don’t see the opportunity for any of these benefits later, then it’s reasonable to decide not to come back.
You gave it a try, and it’s not valuable enough to keep paying the stand fee. There are other opportunities out there, and you can rule this one out and move on.
Getting the most out of every fair
The customer research and email signups you get at a show can have long term benefits for the effectiveness of your marketing and your sales
This extra work can feel like it’s too much to do, ontop of everything else you need to do to prepare for a show, but when you do take the time, every single fair earns a lot more for your business than just the sales on the day.
And the important thing to remember is that this kind of work compounds.
Every insight you get about your customers makes ALL of your marketing better (because you know your customers better)
Every email address you add makes it more likely that EVERY email you send will result in sales (because every time you have more people to sell to)
Over a few years of doing this, you’ll build a large audience of loyal customers, and grow into a much bigger business than you could ever have done by just making sales on the day.
And if the sales side of your fairs is still a bit hit and miss, the Craft Fair Profitability Tracker will do the maths for you, so you know which ones are worth going back to. It’s free, and you can use it at your very next show.
