What To Do When Craft Fair Sales Don’t Cover Booth Fees

If you spent more on your craft show booth fees than you earned from sales at the event, what can you do?

This article shares tips to make the most of every event and help ensure one doesn’t become a waste of your time and money.

At the event

If you’re selling at an event and sales are much slower than you anticipated, you can try the following things:

1 – People watch (with purpose)

Take this time to observe and get a better understanding of craft show shopper and vendor behaviour.

Watch:

• shoppers who walk by your table, looking from a distance but not stopping
• shoppers who stop at your table
• shoppers who stop at other tables
• vendors who are making sales

Analyze:

• Which items on your table seem to catch shoppers’ eyes first (where do most shoppers look as they’re walking by)?
• Of shoppers that pass your table but stop at others, how does your display/business/products differ from the more popular booths?
• Of the shoppers who stop at your table, what are they picking up? Do they seem interested until they see the price? What do they have questions about?

Information like this can help you:

• improve your product line
• adjust your pricing
• create more informative sales pitches or signage (based on the product features shoppers ask questions about)
• improve your products (again, based on the product features shoppers ask questions about)

Also, take note of the busier tables.

• What type of products are they selling?
• What are their price points? Higher or lower than yours?
• What’s their display like?
• What’s their brand like?

Gather information that can help you improve your business.

2 – Ask for feedback

Of the people who do stop at your table, ask them questions that can help you improve your business.

You can be honest with them and let them know you’re just starting your business and are learning, or are working on some changes to your business, so their honest feedback would be really helpful to you.

Ask open-ended questions that force them to answer with more than a “yes” or “no”.

For example, if I’m selling bags, I might ask “what product features did you love about the last bag you purchased?”.

You can also ask questions to help you get a better understanding of craft show shopper behavior.

For example, I might ask:

• Who did you buy from today?
• What brought you to the craft fair today?
• How did you hear about the craft fair?

Questions like these can help you gain insight into the minds of shoppers and create better products for them, market to them more effectively, and connect with them more effectively.

3 – Track conversions

It’s essential to determine whether low sales are due to low event traffic or a problem with your booth/business/products.

Grab a piece of paper and a pen, and mark a tick for each shopper who walks past your table. It’s okay if you don’t catch everyone. The event organizer should have traffic numbers for you at the end of the event.

Create another column and mark a tick for each shopper who stops at your table.

You should also track how many sales you made.

With these numbers, you can calculate conversion rates (number of people who took a desired action divided by the total number of people who did and didn’t take the desired action).

For example, if 150 people walked by my table and 10 of those people stopped at my table:

10 divided by 150 = 0.07

Then multiply that number by 100 to get a percentage:

0.07 x 100 = 7%

I converted 7% of the event’s shoppers into my shoppers.

Here’s an article explaining conversion rates, how to track them, and how to use them to improve your handmade business: 12 Ways to Increase Conversion Rates at Craft Shows

Unfortunately, there aren’t stats to tell you what a good or bad conversion rate is. You’ll just have to compare it to your past events.

You can also try to get an idea of how your competitors are doing. If you’re able to (without neglecting your shoppers or being distracted), try to gather some rough numbers for how many people stop at your neighbour’s booth and/or how many people walk away with shopping bags.

If neighbouring vendors seem to have around the same number of people who stop at their table, that tells you the event may not have been marketed properly, and you’ll need to work on choosing better events.

If you’re noticing that other booths are getting way more people to stop and buy, you’ll need to analyze your table and products.

4 – Take photos of your setup

Often, you’re busy getting everything ready before the doors open that you forget to snap photos of your display. If you have the time while the doors are open, take several photos of your display. These can serve as content for your social media accounts and help you apply to future craft shows.

You can also use the photos later to help you analyze your table and find areas of improvement.

Throughout the event, take more detailed photos. Photos of an item displayed on your table can be posted to social media to let shoppers know that the item is still available to purchase.

5 – Shift your focus to marketing

If people aren’t buying at the event, instead of trying to sell to them, market to them in hopes they’ll find you after the event.

• Hand out business cards or coupons.
• Get people on your newsletter list.
• Encourage people to follow you on social media.
• Focus on having meaningful conversations with people (rather than reciting sales pitches) etc.

Try to enjoy yourself and make connections, despite the lacklustre sales.

 

After the event

If you didn’t make money at the event, put effort into recouping your costs after it.

6 – Analyze your gathered info

Take a look at the numbers you tracked, the feedback you gathered, and the insights you gathered from people-watching.

Use that information to make small changes to your business, products, and/or brand and adjust how you approach the next craft fair.

7 – Post photos

Make use of the photos you took at the event and post them to social media.

Nobody needs to know that your sales were slow at the event. You can post a photo you took of an individual item with a caption, “I can’t believe no one scooped this one up! It’s available in my online shop today.”

8 – Follow up

If you gathered emails for your newsletter list, be sure to send an email to your new subscribers shortly after the event, while your business is fresh in their minds.

You can let them know that you’ve updated your shop, so they can shop online for any items they’ve been thinking about since the event. You may want to offer a little incentive (e.g. a 10% off coupon code).

 

Use each event as a learning experience. You’ll always need to make small adjustments to your business to grow. So try not to look at a low-sales event as a failure, but an opportunity to find areas of improvement.