post craft show: results and lessons learned

Hello, fearless readers!  Before diving head first into my craft show recap, allow me to regale you with an obligatory "get out and vote" message.  Whoever your candidate is, make sure to get to the polls and vote for what you feel strongly about.  Stay educated and make a decision that feels right for you - and don't feel like you need to answer to anyone.

*steps off soapbox*

Anyway, onto the fun stuff: my craft show!


Overall, we did pretty well considering I tried a different strategy.  Basically, I've always been known to under-price myself.  When you're treating it like a hobby, that seems like an okay thing to do.  But recently, I've decided that this is going to be my career someday, and I've started fleshing out a 5-year plan (if nothing else comes from having an MBA, we have that).

When you start running a business, you realize that underpricing yourself hurts the industry - go ahead and ask me my opinion on Wal-Mart.  You're not helping your competitors, so you're not helping yourself.  You're just devaluing what it is you live to do - and that doesn't work for a good crafting economy.

That's why this year, I priced everything what they were worth.  And luckily for me, I still had sales.  Not as many as in previous years, but you know what - I can live with that.  My customers were super excited about their hats and know that they're getting a good quality item.  Oh, and let's not forget - I had a little extra cash to spend on the other vendors who had some fantastic items on display, too :)

But for next time, I really need to remember my audience.  People who buy from my etsy shop are a little different than people who go to these smaller, in-person browsing events.  For example, most of my customers online are adults buying hats for themselves, whereas people attending the craft shows are buying items for pre-teens or teenagers.  This matters due to sizing - if I make a hat or headband fit for a full-grown adult, it's not going to fit a pre-teen.  So that's something to keep in the back of my mind.

Things are back to normal now that Sandy is over and I've re-opened my shop - now it's just time to play catch-up with some custom orders placed last week, as well as another custom order from the craft show.  Lots of exciting things seem to be happening at the same time, and I can't wait for two weeks from now when I can officially concentrate more on the shop!

finished: headbands for custom orders

Woohoo!  Friday at last.  It's sure to be a busy one in my neck of the woods.  I've been preparing a bunch for a craft show tomorrow - so much that I had to put my shop in vacation mode so I could concentrate on building stock.  I think I did a pretty good job with making as much as I did with two weeks of work, class, and a hurricane, but we'll see how things pan out.

Innyhoo, here's a photo of two headbands I finished for custom orders - before, of course, I temporarily paused my shop:

I know I'll be making a bunch more of these in the coming weeks.  I have a few custom orders to work on this weekend at the craft show, too, so there will be lots of photos coming your way soon :)

But for now, I have a killer sinus headache thanks to post-Sandy barometric pressure, so I apologize if this post is frazzled or not written in English.  We escaped fairly unscathed, though we've lost power, cable, and Internet with barely an estimated return date (our friends' estimated return dates are either next week or have blown by with no change, so I'm not expecting them back any time soon).  But it could be worse.