A Good Day

In more ways than one, yesterday I had a successful (if long) craft market! I arrived at the location around 6:40 a.m. – and no, that’s not a typo. Since I was by myself it took a long time to unload my materials and take them to the far end of the field (they were not letting vehicles on the wet baseball diamond so I literally had to walk from the parking lot to my booth space along the fence behind 2nd base with ONE ITEM at a time. It took over an hour just to unload my car.

I had a lot of traffic through my booth and very nice feedback from just about everyone. I had several nice chats with people and they really made the day great. The folks in the booth next to me said that this year’s festival was bigger than she expected (she did it a couple years ago). I think there were about 125 booths there in total, a nice mix of businesses and craft sellers.

I made two sales – one blanket and one painting. And while that’s not a huge number of sales, it made my day to have one item from each category of craft find a new home today. I had told myself that if I didn’t make any sales I’d just finish out this season of markets that I’ve already sign up for and then hang up my shingle. So to have two sales was a nice validation and encouragement to keep going.

I also got to see many friends – including two couples from church, my internet friend Amy and then one of my kids’ daycare teachers (whose son bought the one painting I sold). One problem was that I was alone – not backup so that I could leave the booth for bathroom breaks or food. Fortunately, there were a bunch of Junior ROTC running around selling raffle tickets. As I bought a ticket I joked, “Can I give you extra $$ so you can go buy me some lunch?” One of the boys quickly said he’d do it. However, I told him that if he remembered to come back in an hour I’d definitely need some lunch. Sure enough, about an hour later (2 p.m.) he strolled up and asked if I still wanted food. I could have hugged him. I gave him a tenner and said “hot dog and potato chip fries!” A few minutes later he came back with a hot dog and $8 in change, and said he couldn’t find the potato chip fries. I told him not to worry – the $2 hot dog was more than enough, and gave him a dollar as a tip.

One woman spent more than a few minutes in my booth, and then invited me to bring my blankets and artwork to participate in a craft market her church is doing on November 10th. I told her to email me and I’d also check with a few other local Etsyians to see if they wanted to participate as well.

I have been worried for a while about my pricing on my adult-sized blankets, but I got two specific pieces of feedback today that set my mind at ease. One was a woman who has sold fleece blankets in the past and she said my prices were cheaper than she charged. However, she quoted what she used to pay for fleece and I try not to go into that high a range, so it makes sense that my price is cheaper – simply on fabric cost alone. Another was from a potential customer late in the day. When I told her the price of my large blankets she mouthed, “That’s ALL?” and I almost hugged her. As it is she has said she may contact me about a custom blanket for her daughter’s room and I really hope she does once she decides on the theme of the room.

I had a lot of people ask if I make twin size blankets – at least a dozen people. So I may start seeing if I can order fabric in a way that will allow me to make twin blankets (40″ x 75″) instead of just queen (60″ x 80″).

So I count yesterday as a success – I had sales, made many contacts, found out about another market and had a lot of fun.