Forums » Smalltalk » AMA: Working Craft Fairs/Shows

It is that time of year again. My weekends are filled working booths and tables at craft shows and holiday events. This is my third year and it is a busy time of year with all the holiday events and shows.

I help set up and run booths/tables with my parents. We sell homemade soap and other bath/shower products. They have a little self employed business. We also currently have two shop areas that is up year round.

Ask me anything

Oooh I've always kind of 👀 the idea of markets.

What sells well vs less well?

Any negative experiences with customers?

Honestly I find it really fun and you meet some interesting vendors during them.


What sells depends on the show honestly. Bar soap and body butter are our biggest sellers at almost any show.
Bath bombs are a hit and miss but sell better at family shows like Grinchmas.
Shower steamers are always a big hit too.
But honestly the type of show kinda directs what we sell more of and what we don't.

As far as customers go, surprisingly we don't have much issues. We don't have to much negative experience with them. It has been fairly pleasant interacting with people.

That sounds like a busy yet rewarding time of year for you! It’s great that you get to be involved in a family business and help out with the craft shows and events. I imagine there’s a lot of preparation that goes into it, especially as you juggle between events and running year-round shops.

I’m curious—Do you have any favorite products you personally like to make or sell? Also, how do you manage the busy season? Do you have any strategies for balancing the work, the hustle of events, and keeping up with customer demand?

It is fun but always very stressful this time of year. I still work my normal job during the week anywhere from 40 to 55 hours depending on overtime. Most of my time spent on the family business is Friday Saturday and Sunday but when Mom gets too far behind on packaging and labeling, I help her out after work.

Balancing wise, I say pretty much taking one step at a time and try not to over stress. Which honestly is harder than it seems. Honestly I'm not the best person to give out advice or tips on that. I just do what I can and hope for the best. But having quite a few shows done now, we just get into a groove. as far as the shops. The second one is new within the last month so its been a struggle to keep both stocked and shows going as it is a lot of product. A lot of our products take time to produce. Like a bar of soap takes a few weeks before it is ready to sell.

Favorite products to make, I don't really make much that is my parents. So I can't really comment on that.

Favorite products to sell. Soaps and body butter is always a hit and we sample the body butter. But honestly I enjoy selling bath bombs and toy bath bombs to kids because they get so excited. Toy bath bombs is a thee layer product. One layer is the bath bomb and fizzes. The second layer is a solid bubble bath so it makes bubbles. And the top layer is a toy such as a rubber duck, toy truck, or a random rubber bath animal. Kids love them and we sell a good bit during the holidays.

As someone who crochets and has been thinking about doing a craft show in the future, my biggest question is...

How do you decide how to set your table up? Do you have signs, shelfs, things to hang things, bags/boxes, and where do you get them!?

So table set up is a lot of trail and error depending on shows. Normal space size is 10 by 10 which is pretty small. Set up will depend on if we have a corner spot, how many people are around us and stuff like that.

We do a mixture of displays but always try to have height and tiers. Our soaps are typically on a three to five shelf display. We use baskets and wired racks. We also use different size bowls and crates. Alot of stuff we find on Amazon, Walmart or we even pick up random pieces at thrift stores and places like that. We sell stuff animals that my grandma makes as well. Typically we have them in a wired basket or scattered along the table.

I included an example picture from one of our shows recently this was from one side. We had a corner spot so we outlined the tent with tables and left the middle open for us to sit and have our check out table.

We also get both plastic and paper bags from Amazon in bulk.

Signs are just made out of cardstock.

What kind of marketing does your craft business do? Is it just based on foot traffic at whatever fair you're at? Or do you have like... a mailing list encouraging people to come find you at a given fair?

Marketing is something that we are working on. We do post on Facebook and have people share. Word of mouth is a big one too. We also have people that just find us at all the shows we go to which is kinda cool especially when they recognize us from the shops. Foot traffic, word of mouth and facebook is our biggest marketing strategies so far.

But it is an area that we need to focus more on honestly.

How big an impact does the weather have on sale? Is there a sweep spot temperature wise?

I think Floridians are just used to the heat and random change in weather so that I don't believe it factors too much. A lot of product has to be watched when it comes to outdoor shows which is why the bulk of our shows is late October thru December.

I don't really think the weather impacts too much typically. Maybe when it rains we see a decrease in foot traffic if outside.

We did have one show canceled this year because of the hurricanes. The area the show was suppose to take place was damaged and wasn't able to open up in time. This year is actually a struggle because people don't have the extra money after the storms. The show we are working this weekend isn't doing so great and all the vendors are struggling.

As a vendor I hate working in the heat. I'm not built for the heat. We avoid really hot days because our product can't handle it. Thankfully this year most of our shows are indoor.