Showerthought: Everyone talks about the candles and the labels, but the money in my wife's craft booth is in the boring stuff nobody photographs | Cottage Industry Ideas - nhfree.com
Showerthought: Everyone talks about the candles and the labels, but the money in my wife's craft booth is in the boring stuff nobody photographs
My wife started doing craft fairs around Columbus about a year ago, and for the first 4 months she kept chasing the pretty stuff. You know, the resin coasters and the hand poured candles that look great on Instagram but sit there all day while people pick them up and put them back down. Then in March she threw a $6 roll of custom printed ribbon into her setup and started selling little add on bundles, and that one cheap item moved faster than anything else on the table. Last month at a two day show in Dublin she cleared $740, and about $290 of that came from the boring add ons, not the big handmade pieces. Turns out people at these events already have plenty of cute stuff at home, but they will happily grab a small practical thing if it solves some tiny problem. She almost skipped that show too, because the booth fee was $150 and she thought it was too much. So if you are pricing out your first table, do not build the whole thing around what photographs well. What is the most boring item in your setup, and did it surprise you by outselling the stuff you were actually proud of?