Craft Fairs 2.

Doing the First Event

Where do you start, you've booked your first event. Now what?

Find out how much space you have. Once you know that, you can start planning.

Step one, space, is to get some masking tape and a tape measure, and mark out on an empty bit of floor the space you actually have.

Step two,stock, work out how much stock you have. do you have enough stock? or too much stock. I always find I have too much stock (well, except for my last two craft fairs before Christmas 2009, when as soon as something was made, it went on display and sold).

Step three, height, when people walk past they should be able to see your stock, the best, eye catching items should be elevated and angled so that people walking past can see it.



Step four, prices, my thoughts on this, is that every item should either be priced individually or be in a group of items where the price is clear.



Step five, branding, where does this come in, well everything need to look good, have a similar theme, I use the same font, and the same paper for my stall,


Step six, table dressing, this is where knowing how high your table is can come in useful, when I'm doing indoor events i make sure that the front and sides of my table can't be seen under, why? because it look cleaner, and more professional



Step seven, practice, get some friends round and get some honest opinions as to how your stall looks. Do some mock sales, have you got packaging, bags, care instruction, tape, scissors, etc.

Step eight,spiel, while your practicing, work out what to say, the worst thing to do is just hide behind the table at a craft fair and wait. you'll come home and say your never doing one again, and that you didn't make many / any sales.

At craft fairs etc. I like to stand all day, mainly at the front of my stall, and engage the public and other sellers, to the extent that i know who will sell well each day and who won't, the biggest clue is the people who bring something to read, if your reading you can't sell, also those who bring cushions to sit on, or on outdoor events, bring their own chair. (Woody's golden rule No.1, Don't get comfortable, get selling),if you look at the table dressing picture, you'll see there is no space behind the stall.



Step nine, think again, look at everything you have laid out for your stall, where is it? That something you've missed? Do you have business cards? Do you have fliers for people to take away? Do you have a cash box and float? Do you have some way of checking if money is real? I have a pen which i can use to detect if money is fake? you should be able to pick one up for a few pounds at most good stationers.

Step ten, pack it all away, sounds simple, but years of doing craft fairs has taught me to pack away one of three ways.
Method 1, pack stock in one large box, and table dressings in another, and pack everything in reverse order. so the items you want first are at the top, not the bottom.
Method 2, used if i want to get to things, is to use loads of small boxes (raid the likes of lidl or aldi for empty boxes).
Method 3, used when my next fair is smaller, pack what i need for the next event in one set of boxes, and what i don't need in another set (after the smaller event it all need bring back together for the next one)
Now i know the above seems a bit .... well, it does, but it works

Look at the two stalls below, can you see the big difference, both in layout and presentation



As comments come in I'll start adding them to this post (and giving credit)

Craft Fairs 1.

Craft Stall Evolution

So you are thinking about doing your first craft fair.

Where do you begin?

Let’s start with a simple question, how long has it taken you to make your stock?

Why should that be the first question? Simple, a great many people can spend hours and hours making there stock, and then only spend 10 minutes working out how they plan to display it.

I’ve developed my stall over time, but go through phases now where I’ll spend as much as a week or two planning a stall face lift.

The stall is laid-out every day in a large meeting room (I will generally use my own tables at crafts fairs). I work over every aspect of how the stall will look. How the stall works for me, and for the customer.

I get people to come and look at how it’s laid out, and give me there honest thoughts about how things look.

My big problem every time is too much stock, I love to offer the widest variety, and have this big fear that if I don’t put something out, it would be one of the things that would sell.

I now just make jewellery to sell, but when I first started, my main product was wooden toys, house signs, and I then added candle holders, then key rings, book marks, and finally Jewellery.

How did this evolution come about, I went with what was selling and what was easier to transport and display (of course, I became engrossed in making nicer and nicer jewellery as my skill at it progressed).

The photos below show one of the early stall’s, where every product just had to be seen.



Now, having worked out how to make my jewellery, and spending more time wandering around other craft fairs, I have started to look back and see where the time now needs to be spent.

Over the last week (half term holiday), I have once again been reviewing some of my display.
I take the long term view, what I can’t afford today, I’ll wait for.

Last year, I saw lots of stalls with bunting up, and many had taken the time to put a letter on each bunt, the only problem was, you could spend ages trying to work out what it said.

Toward the end of last year, I posted that I wanted a hand made banner for my stall, I wanted it handmade, I was in no hurry, because once I had it, I could use it.
Helen Jane of http://helenjanesdesigns.folksy.com was kind enough to undertake this commission, working to a simple brief, she was able to use my font (this was a key part of what I wanted, I use the same font on everything, I call it part of my brand recognition policy), and produced the banner seen below



Anyone who looks at my shop will notice the same font is used on my full banner there; I use several small printed versions of this on my stall (see below)


I use the same on various posters, which are A4 and are used in clear plastic display stands




Here's how they look on the stall (this is a earlier version in different colour)



I also use the same on my wood description and care inserts which are now given with every sale (these are 8cm x 10cm).



Even my price tags, which i make myself, use the same font, and once again the shop address online (this tag was a reject, due to bottom cut not being square), (size is 2cm x 5cm).


You will notice several things about the images. They all have that uniformity of banner, paper; style and colour (once again part of my push for brand recognition).
Here are some photos of last years stall, at various different locations, and sizes






I now have a stall that is becoming more focused, and giving a much more professional look. As I have said above, I will always keep reviewing how the stall looks. over the next week i will be building the stall once again, and getting people to look and critique.

What price for a sale

Regardless of how you price an item, the price is only one factor in getting a sale, but you must get it right, and for the right reasons.

What do people think when they see the price of an item?
a) it is priced perfectly
b) it is far too expensive
c) it is far too cheap

So what do these three key words mean, perfectly, expensive and cheap? There are people who will not buy something if it is too cheap. Let’s say my wife’s birthday is coming up, I wouldn't buy my wife a handmade scarf for £10, that’s far too cheap and probably not worth my time looking at. I would certainly consider £35 - £65. So here you can learn something. If and when I decide that my wife needs a handmade scarf, I would dismiss scarves that are cheaper than $35 and more expensive than $65.

Now apply that logic to the items you create.

In the post ‘One percent’
We have looked at how many views an item need before a purchase.

Now I am going to use myself as an example of a buyer, whom do I buy for, simple, myself and my family.

There are some 500 sellers on folksy at the time of writing this; I doubt I would buy from quite a few of them. Why? I admire their skill, their use of materials, their designs, the technique employed. A lot of my favorites are woodworkers or jewellery makers (I need to refine that); they are people who hand craft a piece from raw wood into a unique object. So many of the people I have in my favorites are woodworkers or jewellery makers. Somebody who glues one item to a finding and calls it jewellery is just not my cup of tea. They have a market, and some people have sold hundreds and thousands of objects. But it just isn’t what I’d buy for my wife, mother, or sister.

So there are loads of sellers who have had visits from me on their pages. I admire their work but won't buy from them.

I have also looked in amazement at some seller’s shop’s, whose work I think is just awful....... (Sorry, simple truth)

Now one of folksy faults is that to get on, you need people to favorite your shop, I think this was intended as a type of peer review, but many people (myself included, have asked people to favorite them, in exchange for being favorite back), thereby defeating the objective.

You may make the most beautiful brooch and live in a large urban town. Do you decide to price because nobody in your town would pay more than £5.00? You had a look in a few shops, and that was the price they were selling at, even though there’s was not handmade. No. You price your product properly for the time, raw materials, overheads and profit. I have never sold an item off folksy to someone in my town. Why would I price what my local economy would accept?

You all need to price your items for the right reasons. Never, ever think that because you hand knit a scarf, and that to price it correctly you need to charge £60 that it will not sell. Why should you only price it at £20 because that’s what you think it will sell at? There are buyers out there, they will pay extra for handmade, and they want original, quality items. If they want cheap tat, they can go to asda or anywhere else selling dirt cheap mass produced crap.


Make people want what is special, not what everyone can have.

Woody

One percent

Is my pricing right? Can anyone give me tips on getting a sale? I’ve not had a sale yet, what am I doing wrong? Help! How do I get a sale?

Haven't we all read this kind of post before?

This post will probably be quite long, It’s not the complete answer, but it will help, Remember that underlying everything, your items will only sell if there is a buyer who want’s it. If you have made something that’s rubbish, it wont sell

It doesn't matter what you are making, your item will only ever appeal to 10%, 5%, 1% or 0.001% of the population.
(excluding fellow sellers)
Wouldn’t it be amazing if every time you listed something, it was viewed once and purchased?

Lets not worry about what it is, let just call it ‘the item’.

So we can now agree that your item will only ever appeal to certain % of the population. Now lets make a figure up of 1%. So you need 100 people to view it, for 1 to say, "I would like buy that." The other 99 will say that is pretty, nice, etc. Then move on.

We are now happy that 1 in 100 will like it enough to buy it. But for some reason, that person does not have the money to buy it then and there, but she may have the money soon and will be back then.

So the first 100 people, who view your item, generate the 1 who might buy it, but they don't. You now need another 100 to view it to generate your next 1. This happens, and this one is a student who just can't afford it at the moment, they agree that it is priced more than fairly for what it is, but they are skint.

It is probably at this stage with Mrs. Right just around the corner and three clicks away from finding your shop, that you have a crisis of confidence and drop your prices, close your shop, stop blogging, stop promoting - any or all of these.

By using the ‘Manage your items’ tab under your account, you can see how many times an item has been viewed, you can also use Google Analytics to help with this. For sellers on folksy, the percentage should be higher than 1 percent

So you need to remember that you need people to look at your shop, the more people that look, the more chance of the 1% seeing your item, and having every other factor in place to buy it, now you have been following the advice of other sellers, you tweet, facebook, and blog, but what more can you do? The key question to ask is, How can I get visitors to the site to view items in my shop?

The next few posts will deal with the answers to this question

This post owes a lot of content and respect to Chris Parry, a jewellery who sells on etsy, and his own website

www.chris-parry.blogspot.com
www.flickr.com/photos/chris-parry
www.chris-parry.co.uk

Woody

New Year Giveaway

there is a fab new giveaway on offer from whoatemycrayons who is a seller on folksy

details are at http://www.whoatemycrayons.com/wordpress/giveaway-free-website-hosting-for-a-year/

Good luck

Woody
and have a happy New Year

Google Analytics

The World View

For this first post on Google Analytics, I thought I would look at the origin of visitors to my shop, and not just how they found me.

As is to be expected the majority of my visitors came from the UK. But I was surprised to see some unusual countries popping up from the overseas views, here’s a breakdown of countries

United States = 15 unique visitors
Not Set = 14 unique visitors
Greece = 6 unique visitors
France = 4 unique visitors
Canada = 4 unique visitors
Norway = 3 unique visitors
Poland = 3 unique visitors
Denmark = 2 unique visitors
Austria = 2 unique visitors
Australia = 2 unique visitors
Turkey = 2 unique visitors
Slovenia = 2 unique visitors
Hungary = 2 unique visitors
Romania = 1 unique visitors
Ireland = 1 unique visitors
Switzerland = 1 unique visitors
Armenia = 1 unique visitors
South Korea = 1 unique visitors
Jersey = 1 unique visitors

That just goes to show that the World Wide Web is truly world wide. These results are found by using the map overlay function, you can also zoom in and see which towns in which country your getting your visits from.
Now to do a breakdown for the UK
London was home to the highest number of visitors with 328, next came Bracknell (must be feltique telling her friends), Then came Nottingham with 41 (my home turf, but actually figure is higher when surrounding areas are added in like Beeston with 6, and Bullwell with 5, add all the local areas together and it add's up),Birmingham on 28, Manchester on 25, I could go on but you can see loads of feedback by looking at where you get hit from.
On of my future plans is to follow a track on orders, and see how after sales promotion may be working (more in the future).

(edit; I've had visits from around 190 different locations in the UK, but too many to list by name, so i've just given the top five above)

The Toy (Safety) Regulations 1995

I'm looking at the toy regs in this post as Christmas is coming and many of these will be given and received. Now once again there will be those who feel that reading about the toy reg is a waste of time, and by saying something is not a toy, your safe, all I can say is read on, and remember, under British law, Ignorance is No Excuse.

The Above Regulation must be followed if your selling toys or items that could be classed as toys in the UK and EU.

This includes any soft toy, wooden toy, or any other item that may be considered a toy by Trading Standard, even if you claim it's not.

Here's a link to look at guidance notes of the regulations



Toy Safety - the law in brief

Since 1 January 1990, UK Regulations which implement the European Directive
on the safety of toys have been in force.
The main requirements are that toys must:
satisfy safety requirements (termed the ‘essential safety
requirements’);
bear the CE marking;
bear the required name and address details;
be accompanied by warnings where necessary.
In addition, information must be maintained for inspection by enforcement
authorities.

Second-hand toys must be safe but are not subject to the other requirements in
the Regulations.

The Regulations apply to manufacturers, importers, retailers, hirers and other
suppliers of new and second-hand toys - that is, anyone supplying toys in the
course of any business. Toys distributed free of charge in the course of business
are also covered.
Supplying toys which are subject to the Regulations but do not meet their requirements would constitute an offence and could result in penalties of a fine of up to £5,000 or a term of imprisonment, or both.
The same safety requirements apply everywhere in the Community, so safe toys complying with the UK Regulations, and any other applicable Community requirements, may be sold anywhere in the Community.
The essential safety requirements in the Regulations are intended to provide a comprehensive framework for ensuring that toys are safe. In order to comply with the essential safety requirements it will be necessary for some toys also to comply with other legislation - e.g. toys that are cosmetics must also comply with the Cosmetic Products (Safety) Regulations 1996 (as amended).
The Regulations do not apply to some products (e.g. toy steam engines)which might otherwise be regarded as toys but are specifically excluded from the definition of toy in the Regulations. (Note that such products are
covered by the General Product Safety Regulations 1994 and may be subject
to other requirements.)

How do I decide whether my product is a toy or not?

The Regulations define a toy as: ‘any product or material designed or clearly intended for use in play by children of less than 14 years of age, but excluding those products specified in Schedule 3’ [of the Regulations].

Only the courts can decide whether an item comes within the above definition.

(I've listed below the products not regarded as toys under the regulations)
'The following are not toys for the purpose of the Toys (Safety) Regulations 1995.
(However, in most cases they are subject to the General Product Safety Regulations
1994 (see section 6 of Annex A) and may be subject to other European legislation.)'
1. Christmas decorations.
2. Detailed scale models for adult collectors.
3. Equipment intended to be used collectively in playgrounds.
4. Sports equipment.
5. Aquatic equipment intended to be used in deep water.
6. Folk dolls and decorative dolls and other similar articles for adult collectors.
7. ‘Professional’ toys installed in public places (shopping centres, stations etc.).
8. Puzzles with more than 500 pieces or without picture, intended for specialists.
9. Air guns and air pistols.
10. Fireworks, including percussion caps (1).
11. Slings and catapults.
12. Sets of darts with metallic points.
13. Electric ovens, irons or other functional products operated at a nominal voltage
exceeding 24 volts.
14. Products containing heating elements intended for use under the supervision
of an adult in a teaching context.
15. Vehicles with combustion engines.
16. Toy steam engines.
17. Bicycles designed for sport or for travel on the public highway.
18. Video toys that can be connected to a video screen, operated at a nominal
voltage exceeding 24 volts.
19. Babies’ dummies.
20. Faithful reproductions of real firearms.
21. Fashion jewellery for children.


One of the Main requirements is that all toys must carry the CE mark either on them or in the packaging.
What is the significance of the CE marking – does it mean that the toy is safe?

The CE marking is not a European safety marking or quality symbol intended for consumers and should not be considered as such. Its purpose is to indicate to enforcement authorities that the toys bearing it are intended for sale in the European Community and signifies a declaration by the manufacturer or his authorised representative that the toys satisfy the essential safety requirements applicable to them and are entitled to access to Community markets.

Do I have to submit my toy for testing?

If the toy has been manufactured in accordance with the toys safety standards - and the standards cover all aspects relating to the toy – then it can be self-certified. In such cases, the toy may be submitted for testing but this is not mandatory under the Regulations.

Where the standards do not cover all aspects relating to the toy a sample must be submitted for EC type-examination by an Approved Body.

The toy safety standards are national standards which correspond to EU harmonised standards.

Your Item must also carry your Address details on the CE mark Certification

Can a website address be used to fulfil the name and address details which are required to be put on the toy or its packaging?

No. The name and address details are required to enable consumers or enforcement officers to contact companies. While an abbreviated address (e.g. name, postcode and city) is acceptable, a website would not because it may not be permanent

BS EN 71
The above is the National Standards by which all makers (manufacturers) must comply, they are broken down in to parts, and some may not be relevant to all toys

BS 5665: Part 1:1989 EN 71: Part 1:1988: Mechanical and Physical Properties
(until 31 January 2001)
BS EN 71 - 1:1998: Mechanical and Physical Properties
BS EN 71 - 2:1994: Flammability
BS EN 71 - 3:1995: Specification for Migration of Certain Elements
BS EN 71 - 4:1998: Experimental Sets for Chemistry and Related Activities
BS EN 71 - 5:1993: Chemical Toys (sets) other than Experimental Sets
BS EN 71 - 6:1995: Graphical Symbol for Age Warning Labelling
BS EN 50088:1996: Safety of Electrical Toys

For most craft makers BS EN 71 - 1 1998, BS EN 71 - 3:1995 and BS EN 71 - 6:1995 are the three standards that you need to be most concerned with.

Most Library's carry subscriptions to online databases, and when i carried out my research a few years ago, i was able to access the BSI online database free at my local library

Summary
You need to know that if you make and sell anything that could be classed as a toy, that you must comply with the regulations, and to do that you can self certify your process in the making of your toys, To self certify you must also be able to comply with the standards set out in BS EN 71.

Sorry about the length of this post, I've edited it down as much as I can, Feel free to ask questions