10/28 Craft Show in Farmington, NY

I was a vendor at a craft show in Farmington, NY on Saturday.  I had never done this particular show before, so I was unsure of what kind of results I would have gotten from it.  We had to use our Tom-Tom to get directions because we were not familiar with the specific area, and it took us on all kinds of back country roads.  The show was at a Church/Preschool and it was way out in the country.  We didn’t even know this place existed, and it only took us about 15-20 minutes to get there from home.

I was hesitant to sign up for this show, because I have a bigger show the following weekend, and this show was only offering an 8′ table for space.  I’m used to setting my stuff up in a 10×10 area, and was afraid my booth would be too cluttered in such a small space.  But the very nice woman who coordinated the event said she’d be happy to accommodate me for space size, so I went ahead and signed up. It was $30 for the booth space.

The last 2 weeks I really went to town making my products, especially Swiffer pads and Unpaper towels.  It took me about 2 days just to package everything up.  My BF goes with me to the craft shows, so he really makes it easy on me.  He loads and unloads everything for me!

My booth name, of course, is Crafty Little Bee, and everything was labeled as such.  I had my website and my Etsy shop listed on all my business cards, and my etsy shop was listed on the product labels.

I was really excited about this Fall season of craft shows, because I FINALLY have a Smartphone and thanks to Intuit GoPayment, I can accept credit cards at my shows!  (Click here to get your FREE credit card reader! There’s NO monthly fees!)

My very first sale, within minutes after the show started, was for a roll of unpaper towels, and she paid by credit card!  I knew at that point, that it was going to be a good day. The show was only 6 hours long, and sold so much stuff!

I sold a few rolls of unpaper towels, many swiffer pads, a few fleece swiffer dusters, a few purse tissue holders, and lots of my soy candles.  I had the lids off of a few of them, and everyone told me how that’s all they could smell throughout the building.  And they weren’t even lit!   I had my business cards on my booth in various locations, and by the end of the day, all of my cards were gone.  I had a lot of people say they were going to contact me online because they wanted special order items.

One lady wanted unpaper towels in a certain print that I didn’t have at the show.  Another lady wanted a 30 oz. candle in Lavender and another in Cinnamon (which I didn’t have at the show – only smaller sized candles in those scents) and another lady wanted to order some swiffer pads for her dry mop instead of for her wet mop, which I haven’t been selling yet, but I do make them.

It ended up being a VERY successful day, and my BF and I were both very happy with our sales. We had unloaded 4 Rubbermaid bins of stuff for the show, and when we went to pack up, we only had 2 1/2 bins filled up from what was left over.

Here are a few more pics from my booth.  It is a work in progress!  BF is going to be making me some tiered wood shelves to display my candles on so I eventually won’t have to keep bringing the black plastic shelving.  And I have some more display ideas for the next show.  We’ll see what I can come up with this week, as my next show is in Henrietta, NY next Saturday!   It’s going to be an EXTREMELY busy week, especially since I have to replenish what sold on Saturday and I need even more than I had this past weekend for the upcoming show!