More like "Acres of Fail" !!!

Well, we at Biddy's Beads learned an important lesson today. As a vendor, know what you are getting yourself into. It was a beautiful facility, but no one showed up!



Try to seek out others who have done an event, or talk to locals who have attended. We chose to do a winery festival this weekend, expecting that it would probably have less traffic than the Artist's Market but that we could make some new connections and get our goodies out to some new people. Little did we know, we were getting ourselves into a disaster! Here is where we messed up, and where the event coordinators fell short.



Where we messed up-
1. We did not go to Artist's Market
2. We did not go to Artist's Market
3. We did not go to Artist's Market
(You get the idea- if you know something works for you, do it!)



Where the Event Coordinators for this event messed up-
1. No signs on the way there, and it was in the middle of nowhere
2. Little to no advertising
3. Charging for EVERYTHING. Wine tasting- $4, Grape stomping - $$$, Lunch $19!!!!
4. Really bad entertainment. It was like being at an elementary school talent show. The country dancers were pretty fun, but the old geezers singing terrible droning crap for hours on end and the little kids clogging to horrible music was just too much.
5. The building it was in was super nice, but HOT and they did not try to do anything about it. We ended up removing the big plastic tent windows ourselves.
6. Poor vendor choices, and only about 10 vendors. There were about 5 jewelry vendors, some of which was not handmade, and one woodworker, the rest was pre-made foods, Pampered Chef, and other non-craft things/advertising for local business. Some of the other vendors were jerks.
7. Poor communication. Had we not contacted the event this week, we would have thought we were not accepted. Once there, we had to wait to get to the building to set up, and no one from the event spoke to us except one very nice employee who was our ONLY customer of the day. When she saw us packing up, she asked us why and said she didn't blame us at all for going.
8. Advertising to the vendors that there would be free coffee and doughnuts. There was neither!

We ended up leaving the event about 2 hours early. We had seen one person make one sale the whole day and she seemed to know everyone who came in the door, which really wasn't many people. Unfortunately she was right next to us, and she jumped up and grabbed people away from our tables before they had a chance to look!

I've been to family cookouts with much higher attendance. The few people who were there seemed to be those who brought the kids to clog and they were not participating otherwise. There were possibly 25-30 actual visitors who stopped by our booth and no one bought anything. After the $25 set up fee, we made a whopping negative $5 plus fuel costs to get there. Absolutely not what we expected! On the bright side, our booth looked beautiful and we finally found the best way to display our earrings.



In happier news- We will be back at our friendly Downtown Lexington Corp Artist's Market next weekend! I have a couple of handbags ready to go and we have a load of new jewelry!