With this year’s fall market season quickly approaching, I thought I would look back and share with you the good, the bad, and the ugly of my first event last fall. If you’ve been curious about selling your crochet at events or hesitant to sign up for a market, here’s an inside look at my experience (and maybe give you several things to learn from to make your experience smoother than mine!).
The Chosen Event
I have always loved the vibe of festivals and craft market events. Seeing the creativity of all the different things people make and being able to support small local businesses has a different energy than walking into a big box store to shop. I love being able to talk to the people who actually create the items, learn how things are made, and see people’s energy light up when you buy something from them. With things I’ve made over the last couple of years piling up in my craft room, I was determined to make a craft market happen, but I wanted to pick the right event.
I finally decided to dive in when I saw a flyer for the Harvest Happy Hour at Brittingham Farms. I thought it would be perfect for my first vending experience. It was an evening event in mid-October (no early morning set up, yay!) and marketed as a quintessential fall event. They were advertising line dancing in the barn, hay rides, lavender hot chocolate, mechanical bull rides, as well as vendors. It sounded really fun, so I signed up.
The Pre-Market Prep
Before I describe how the night went, let’s back up a bit. In addition to the things I’ve made over the last few years through designing and pattern testing, I actively started increasing my inventory around July. This included beanies, headbands, accessories, and shawls. Being a one person show, I wanted to give myself plenty of time and have plenty of inventory.
With the event on Friday, I started getting everything together on Monday, knowing things always take me longer than I think they will. Thankfully, I had thought ahead enough to buy new pom poms, pom pom buttons, and brand tags a couple of weeks before. But, I still needed to weave in ends for quite a few things, put on all of the brand tags, attach the pom poms, finish figuring out my pricing, add price tags, and figure out how I wanted to set up my tables. But how long could that really take?
As it turns out, a really, really, long time. It literally took me all week to get everything in order, despite spending several hours a day working on everything. Additionally, I spent the 24 hours prior to the event feeling like I was running in circles. This included spending 2 hours driving around to various local stores to find rivets to secure my brand tags to my products. The two packs of rivets I bought from different shops on Amazon (delivered the day before the event) were both smaller than advertised and slipped through the holes in my tags. I finally found some at Michael’s, but they were silver, not brass. While not on brand, I went with them because they were better than nothing.
Then, as if running around town all afternoon wasn’t enough, I was up until 2am the night before adding price tags and brand tags to all of my products…and that was with my mom helping me until about 10pm. It was a mess. Luckily, going forward, I will only need to do this for new pieces being added to my inventory. From now on, I will definitely be weaving in ends and adding tags as I go. Advice for beginners: Learn from me. Don’t wait until the week of to do it all. Do it as you go. You’ve been warned.
How My First Crochet Market Went
On the day of the event, my mom came over about 30 minutes early to help me pack the car. I had an idea in my head of how to make everything fit, but hadn’t actually tried it out. Luckily, it worked perfectly. Like, we had just enough room for ourselves and not much else when we left. I wish I had taken a picture because it was almost comical. Tetris skills for the win! Advice for beginners: I have a Subaru Impreza. You don’t need an SUV or truck to do these events. A car will work, you may just have to be creative with how you pack things.
Crochet Market Set-up
Getting to the farm was easy enough and after checking with the event coordinator, we found out booths would be lining the pathway in one long strip from the parking lot to the barn. Because we were one of the first ones there, I had my pick of the land and choose a spot about mid-way back, across from where they would be selling drinks. It had a walkway next to it, basically making it a coveted corner booth.
Set up was a breeze, as we were able to drive right up to our space to load and unload. No need to make multiple trips lugging a heavy tent and inventory half way across the world to set-up. Yay! I had played around with how I wanted to set-up my display in my living room and taken pictures once I had it how I liked it. So, my mom and I just referenced the photos to get everything in place.
As I set up, I introduced myself to the nearby vendors. Everyone was really friendly and offered advice when I said this was my first event. I was able to make some connections and even got an offer to vend at an upcoming pop-up event! The vendor across the walkway from me sold nut brittles, which we jokingly told her was probably dangerous for our health. I love brittles, but I try not to eat sugar too often. However, after finding out it was gluten free (I have Celiac), I immediately purchased a big bag of pecan brittle. I couldn’t help myself, and it was so delicious! Plus, I got to support a fellow local maker. Win-win!
The Harvest Happy Hour
Pretty soon, the gates opened and people started streaming in. People were definitely there for the theme. Everyone was wearing cowboy hats and boots and there was denim and flannel galore. To get to the line dancing and hayrides, everyone had to walk past all of the vendors, which felt like it would be perfect to encourage people to shop. However, very few actually stopped and looked at any of us. This event was a ticketed event, though, and people had to pay to get in ($12, I think). I wonder if that impacted people’s willingness to spend more money to shop.
Eventually, though, a few people did trickle in to my booth, giving me an opportunity to practice talking to customers. Everyone had nice things to say about my products! I was so excited to finally get my first sale – a messy bun beanie! But that’s when I realized the Square card reader times out after a period of inactivity. I then struggled to get it to wake up and reconnect to my phone. Advice for beginners: Thoroughly play around with your card reader before your first event. I made sure I knew how to actually charge a card, but didn’t look much beyond that. Eventually, I got it to reconnect, and luckily the customer was super friendly about it. From that point on, I played with it every so often to try to keep it awake. There just weren’t enough sales for it to stay awake on it’s own.
The saving grace to the night was when they set up the mechanical bull almost directly across from my booth. It didn’t bring in any additional shoppers, but it did give hours of entertainment throughout an otherwise boring night. No one managed to hang on more than about 20 seconds or so, and I found the girls did much better than the boys at staying on.
The Issue with Evening Events in the Fall
The fun thing about being a crochet vendor is getting to wear your pieces at events. Messy bun beanies seemed to be the thing everyone found most intriguing and interesting throughout the night, especially once the sun went down and I put one on my own head to keep my ears warm. And chilly it did get! Once the sun went down, it took all of the warmth with it. Being mid-October that wasn’t too surprising, but we hadn’t had many evenings that were this chilly yet that year. I was glad I had thought ahead to bring extra layers. Though, my mom and I joked that if it got too bad, we could always just wear more of the inventory.
Because it was a night event, I had bought a camping light I could hang from the center of my tent to light up my booth. The event coordinator had told us we likely wouldn’t need additional lighting as they had rented stadium lights, but most of those were up by the barn. If I hadn’t brought additional lighting, I would have been in trouble. Advice for beginners: Think through what you may need and make sure you have it yourself. Don’t rely on the event. You never know what may happen and it is better to be overprepared than need something and not have it.
The End of the Night
By the end of the night, many vendors were ready to split (and some actually packed up and left early – don’t do that!) and I heard a lot of grumblings about not making a lot of money. We had calculated I would need to sell about $150 worth of goods to “break even” on my $50 booth fee. So, for my first event, that was my goal. Making a profit would be even better, but I would be happy so long as I didn’t lose any money. With the sale of 2 beanies, 2 messy bun beanies, and a mini pumpkin, that put my sales right at $155 for the night. My mom joked that I was probably the only one who hit my sales goal at the event.
So, let’s break down my first crochet market:
The Good:
- The event was well run. The coordinator was responsive and helpful when I had questions and the space was laid out well. I thought it was a good experience overall.
- Set up and tear down were a breeze since we could pull up right next to our space.
- The venue was GORGEOUS. I mean, look at these lavender field directly behind our booths.
- Networking with other vendors secured me some new vendor friends and an invite to an upcoming pop-up event.
- I met my money goal. Granted, I would have liked to have exceeded my goal and actual made money instead of breaking even, but at least I didn’t lose any either.
- I feel I gained a lot of experience: what worked and what didn’t when loading the car and setting up; how to talk to customers and when to take a step back; learning there is no such thing as being overprepared; what did and didn’t work with the Square card reader.
The Bad:
- It is definitely fall because once the sun went down, it got cold. Fast. This obviously isn’t a knock against the event because it is not like they can control the weather, but it still impacted my experience, especially tearing down at the end of the night.
- If I had listened to the event coordinator and not brought an additional light for my tent, I would have been in the dark. It’s always better to be overprepared and find out your don’t need something you brought than to find out you need it and don’t have it.
The Ugly:
- The turnout for the event was good, but people were not there to shop. None of the vendors pulled in many sales that night.
- The amount of time I spent leading up to the event tagging, pricing, adding pom poms, weaving in ends, and doing all of the last minute things was stressful. Never again. Lesson learned.
Overall, it was a good first crochet market. The set up and tear down couldn’t have been easier, letting me get that experience under my belt. I was able to network with some of the other local vendors and make some good connections. While I would have loved to make more money at the event, I at least broke even and everyone who came in my booth had great things to say about my products. Plus, I learned some valuable lessons, like not waiting until the week of to do all of the last minutes tasks for all of my inventory. I’m happy with how things went and am looking forward to my next event!
So now knowing all this, will you finally take the leap and be signing up for your first crochet market this year? Happy stitching!
