15+ Craft Fair Ideas That Sell Best! || Complete Guide

It's craft fair season. We have been getting a ton of questions about craft shows, craft fairs, farmers markets, all the shows. Everybody wants to know how to sell more stuff or do a better job at these art shows and craft shows, farmers markets, or whatever they're called. People ask us, what do you bring to a craft show? Should I pay more for access to electricity and a power outlet? Jenny and Davis, what should I build for a craft show? What's going to sell best? Do I need a website? Do I need a sign? Do I need business cards? What should I have on my table? Should I get a table cloth? How much should I charge at a craft show? So many great questions. So we wanted to make a video to answer all those questions instead of breaking our thumbs trying to answer all the DMs. So if you've sent us in a message, I really appreciate you. I hope this video answers all your questions. And if you're asking these kinds of questions, you're not alone. You're actually in good company. Lately, the craft fair thread in our discord server has been the most popular. It seems like everybody's trying to make up for lost time after missing the last few years and not being able to go out and see people. Even in the middle of this recession, people are still spending crazy amounts of money with makers at these craft shows. At least that's what I've seen. I've spent a lot of time these last few weeks at shows and events trying to sell our charcuterie boards and our cutting boards as Christmas gifts. So many shows. And after two years doing a lot of these events, here is my go-to setup. I always have my little table with a really pretty table cloth laid over the front. And if I have room for a backdrop, I'll set this one up and I'll even wrap it in some fairy lights and stick some flowers and stuff in it. But if I don't have room, then I just do my table. And on my table, I make sure I have plenty of boards for people to see. I have a sunrise board, I have a sunset board, I have a charcuterie board, and I show the options for engravings on each one too. I have one with a wreath, I have one with a full name, and I even show people that I can engrave the back of the boards with their business's information. But one of the things that I never forget, and I never leave for a show without, is a packaging setup. Everybody always likes to see what these boards are packaged like. So I set up a little sample that still displays the board itself. I always pack a big stack of business cards to lay out and scatter a couple of decorations on the table. But I get it. A lot of you don't have setups like this and you actually want to sell stuff at the show. Jenny tends to make most of her sales by following up with people that she meets at the show. So she'll set this booth up and then she'll walk away and go meet people. And I understand that's a little bit different from what most of you are trying to do. So I want to introduce you to the king and queen of the craft show. The royal court of the farmer's market. The prince and princess of the art show. All the way from Indiana, Abby and Joey Berry. These two have been killing it in their business. They just started in December and they've made so much money just doing farmer's markets and craft shows. So yeah, we filed for LLC back in December of last year. Well, I wanted to quit my job. Did you eventually get to the point, Abby, where you could decrease the amount of time you spent at your day job? Oh yeah, definitely. I was full-time, but I work about two days a week now. We first met Joey and Abby in the stud stack. That's our private discord community for makers who run a business. And we've just been blown away with their progress and their success this year. I remember when we signed up for our first show and our first events, we were so nervous and scared. We had no idea what to do, what to bring, what to what to show people, like how to set up a booth. Probably a lot of the same questions that you're asking. And I really wish that we would have had someone to talk to who just finished their first year. Not someone who's super experienced, because I'm not at that level yet, but just someone who just finished their first year of doing shows successfully, that would have been such a valuable person to hear from. So today, that's what we're going to bring to you. When you signed up for your first show, were you nervous? Oh my gosh, we were so scared. We had no idea where it was going to go. Because we work full-time jobs. We've sat down with them for over an hour and asked them tons of questions about craft shows and craft fairs. We're going to share some of the lessons that they've learned in this first year with you. And full disclosure, we have the full recording of the conversation that we had with them that we want to sell you access to at the end of the show in a micro program. So if you like this video, and you enjoy it, and you get a lot out of it, we really know that you'll get even more out of listening to the full conversation. But I'll save that stuff for the end. Let's dive into the stuff that you need the answers to now. So what do I make for a craft fair? That's probably the biggest question we get, so we want to answer it first. We kind of have four ways to answer that question. The first answer is to make something at every price point. You want to have a product at $10, $30, $100, $500, and $1,000. You never know who's going to be at these shows, and you want to have something to fit every type of budget. So $10 items, think of easy things. Keychains, toys, ornaments, that kind of stuff. For $30, you can step it up and maybe start to do some puzzles, or some games, or a premium version of one of your $10 items. At the $150 level, these are things like cutting boards or charcuterie boards. Closer to $500, you're talking about one-off art pieces, maybe some scrap wood art or something, you know, really nice like that. And once you get closer to $1,000, you're talking about maybe coffee tables, some sort of custom table, something that they might not buy there in the moment. You can at least start the conversation about selling it to them there at the show. But they physically need to see that item before they even know that that's something they can talk to you about. The second answer is to make impulse buy gifts. We're talking about things that are personalized, little games, things that are super bright and colorful, things that people see and they just cannot resist getting because they like it so much. These are items generally on the cheaper end. The third way to answer the question what do I bring to a craft show is make something tangent to another hobby or another interest. Sports are a really easy one. If you make a little golfing Christmas ornament or a little football plate or if you make little signs that say sorry gone golfing or sorry gone fishing, like little trinkets and things like that do really, really well at craft shows. Especially if you could dial into the really rare hobbies that are only specific to your region. So for example, Jenny's family loves deer hunting in Wisconsin. So if you made some deer hunting ornaments or little signs, oh my gosh, the people in Wisconsin would eat that up. You also see this with state pride. So if you can do like the shape of your state or something like in Texas, that would do really well. So hobby related things or interest-based things. Again, keep it small, keep it cheap. These are things that the Stud Stack said do really well at craft shows. Cribbage boards, customized hats, keychains, funny tree ornaments, cutting boards, leads for larger. Oh, this is a good one. Okay. So leads for larger items, like Jenny was talking about with the coffee table that you bring. You don't necessarily sell them anything that day at the show, but you get the conversation started about a big custom piece that their wife has been asking for for a long time. And man, you can really land a sale there if you do the groundwork at the craft show and start to talk to them and ask them questions about what it is that they're really dreaming of. What to make. So I highly recommend like farmer's markets because that allows us to kind of try new products every week. We don't have to wait for like a month until like another event to try a new product. Like we get a little bit of a test every single Saturday. I built some blanket ladders in our apartment and sold them. I had to make these like on our back deck. Didn't have a lot of space. Didn't have a workshop or anything. It's at a circular saw and an impact and a drill and that's it. So it seemed like an easy enough product to make with what I had. So just kind of made it work. Was there something that you didn't know if it was going to go so well and you ended up like selling out or it went better than expected? Probably our best seller now would be our like leather patch hats. So we make these hats that they have a leather patch that we put in the center of them and we make a design on the leather patch. The next question we've been getting recently on craft shows is how much stuff do I bring? Like how much inventory should I pack with me to take to the show? Brad he's asking when you make a new product how many do you make it first? So you know if you can judge how popular it's going to be. Oh for us that's a guess. Yeah we just guess. I mean like if I'm making a new magnet or something I'll make like 10-15 of them. I know they're not all probably going to sell at the first show but over like the next three shows I'm probably going to get pretty low on them. So it really just depends. They might not sell great at the first show but if you keep taking them and keep putting them out like eventually people are going to buy them. So super quick answer to this question. Bring enough so that if you completely sold out of that item you would be happy with how much you were able to sell. If it's your first show don't worry about leaving money on the table. Selling out is a good thing. Just bring enough that you'd be really happy and satisfied if you sold out and had to And the next question is how do I know if I'm ready? When do I sign up for a craft fair? You're probably not going to like this answer but I want you to sign up before you feel ready. I actually want you to sign up for two shows before you feel ready. If you found a craft show or a farmer's market that you really wanted to be a part of go sign up for it. A lot of times they'll even let you sign up for them like up to a year in advance. Sign up knowing that you're not ready and that's okay but putting it on the calendar even though you're not ready and then working to get yourself ready is going to give you a higher chance of success than not putting it on the calendar and just waiting until you're ready. And we want you to sign up for two shows that way after you finish your first show you can immediately apply everything you've learned to that second one and you can get right back on the horse. And the last question we get is how do I price things at the craft fair? Well if you go to JennyandDavis.com slash price my work there is a 100% free pricing calculator for you to use. You're probably batching out things and building a whole bunch of projects all at once so if you click on the advanced settings on that calculator it'll let you figure out how to price things that you've batched out. This pricing calculator is 100% free for you to use. I don't want your email address or anything. I just want you to charge what you're worth. This is going to sound crazy but sometimes the person with the highest prices at the craft shows gets the most sales because it's perceived as the highest value or the highest quality. I know it's crazy but price high because you deserve it. And now the last tip that I'm going to share with you guys came from somebody who spent $10,000 on their booth at one of the largest craft shows in the state of Texas. It's basically this person's full-time job to run these booths. The event is called Round Top. It's a world-renowned interior design event that happens twice a year here in Texas. And the super secret advanced tip that she told me, remember she's spending $10,000 on her booths, don't use a pop-up tent. I know that sounds insane but we'll explain why that works in the micro program. Sorry, gotcha. But if you're watching this far, you're going to enjoy the micro program. I really hope to see you in there. We really believe that you could become king of the craft show if you implement all of the lessons we talk about in the micro program. We have the recording of the entire conversation with Joey and Abby. They made over $20,000 in their first season doing shows. We have a craft show specialist guide for you to print out and we even have a quiz for you to test your knowledge to see if you're ready to become a king of the craft fair. So if you've been wandering through these craft shows and you're lying awake at night thinking, man, I could do that too, this micro program is for you. Right now, if you click the link below and use the code kingoftheshow, you can get the micro program at 50% off. The sale is not going to last long. It's actually going to end on Black Friday. So hit the like button if you like this video. We've got to get back to fulfilling our hundreds of Christmas orders that have to go out like next week. I got to go finish 100 boards right now. So we will see you on the next one.