Craft Show Recap – Irvington Halloween Festival

Tweet My second festival, the Irvington Halloween Festival, was another success!  Despite the inclement weather (SUPER windy and pretty stinking chilly), sales were good and I met some great people.  Plus there were load of people and dogs in costume, so I had plenty of entertainment!

When I got there to set up at about 7:30 it was 30-some degrees – not so much fun.  Luckily I had my big ol’ Thermos of coffee and some warm gloves.  I had some help to set up the tent and tables (thanks Mom and Mike!) and I had everything ready by the time the show officially started at 9 am.  Unfortunately, this would be the time I realized I forgot to put the memory card in the camera, so I don’t have any setup pictures – sorry!  You can see in the pictures how the wind just blew my tablecloths around.  I ended up taping them to the undersides of the tables.
 
Thanks were s-l-o-w at first – it took a long time for the weather to warm up, and I was at the very end of the street.  I had a few browsers, but I did a lot of coffee-drinking and jumping up and down to stay warm and not a lot of selling.  Around 11 am the taco truck showed up and seemed to bring the people with it.  It was parked next to me and was EXTREMELY hard to resist, but I didn’t think people would want taco filling on their bibs and burp cloths, you know?

The products that sold were certainly different than my first craft fair.  At Rocky Ripple it seemed like I was selling small amounts of stuff all day long, whereas at Irvington I made fewer sales for bigger amounts.  People were crazy about the portfolios and shoes at Rocky Ripple, but everyone bought bibs and changing pad clutches at Irvington.

 
I met two people that have retail locations around Indy – Heather from the Little Green Bean Boutique and Erin from Enroute Spa at the Indy airport.  I can’t wait to go check out Heather’s shop - It’s brand new and I’ve read some great reviews.  Erin organizes the Hip and Handmade shows at the airport and I’m hoping to be a part of the holiday show.  I’ll keep y’all updated. 

So, here are my lessons from this show:

• Dress in layers when it’s going to be at all chilly
• Make sure your displays are reasonably wind-proof – thank goodness I sell beanbags or I wouldn’t have had anything to hold products down!
• You can’t use fancy phones with gloves on
• Bring weights for your tent (mine scooted over three feet from the wind!)
• Practice with the knucklebuster.  I just could NOT get it right and ended up just hand writing all the credit card slips.  I’ve got the Square card reader for my phone on order – hopefully it shows up before the next show!

Let me know if you guys have any questions!  After selling a good amount of stuff this weekend I get to refill my fabric stash – first I’m going to ransack a friend’s Etsy shop and then tear up Fat Quarter Shop!