I usually help her setup and leave but she never really makes any profit because she wants to do things in her own way in her world. Is there more that i can do to help her at a craft fair instead of losing money? can i make something perhaps?
Im unsure, what would you advise? if you have any questions leave a comment.
My brother faces a similar problem. Running a business is a great way to get the chance to make a living doing something you love, but in order to be profitable you have to balance what you want with what customers want. If she’s dead set on what she makes and how she makes it, there’s not much you can do.
I always find there’s a huge mismatch at craft fairs between what people are selling and what people actually need. Like I can’t tell you how many holiday-time markets I’ve been to where nobody had Christmas tree ornaments.
I used to sell at swap meets and the best selling items were the $1 table. We had a $5 table and $10 table too, plus more expensive items.
Hopefully she can find a way to expand to what people are buying and at the right price to make money.
Sadly we gave up on swap meets because for our type of items, we barely paid the swap meets because for fees.
Example we went to a smaller swap meet $20 for a spot, and we would make $30 or so. Over 10 hours of work, $1 per hour for 2 people…
The bigger swap meet spot was $120, and we barely made that too. Maybe $130… so again $10 profit for over 10 hours work.
I’m sure our failure was lack of items people actually wanted.
Context matter, especially when you’re asking for fairness.
For one, how is she losing money?
- Does it mean somebody is straight up stealing, i.e. taking stuff without consent?
- Did someone make a deal that is less than beneficial to her?
If it’s the first one, than fuck it, you should beat the shit out of that thief.
If it’s the second one, then you should ask yourself how so, and why your mom thinks otherwise.
Also, if you think that she’s not paid enough and that she should monetize more, do note that monetizing something would take significant effort, and in some case could’ve taken the joy out of something she enjoy doing.
Does she really want to make profit or do her own thing? Can she afford it?
Crafts are very hard to make profit from. Many people just think of it as making their hobby slightly cheaper.
I guess not but i just feel bad when she puts in so much effort and she get to earn anything, but perhaps her joy is enough?
Like one time she paid 35 dollars for 3 hours at a craft fair and only made 2 bucks., if you need a example of a time i felt bad about it.
You see she lost $33 and wasted 3 hours of time. What did she see?
She may very well think she spent $35 to get 3 hours to chat with people about crafts.
If she doesn’t need to sell crafts to survive, she might just be treating everything she’s doing as a social hobby.
If she’s actually looking to improve her income, it would probably be better to dig into it with her. What exactly is she making and what is she charging for it? Are some crafts of no interest to customers and should be dropped? Is there another craft that sells well and could do with a few other colour/size/whatever options?
There’s always room to tweak the table, but she’s probably the only person who could really point at what things are ideal for her to focus on. And if that’s not why she’s doing all this in the first place, you might not get anywhere with your intentions.
Case in point: there’s an old lady in my area that goes out at 5am most mornings and collects refundable cans from people’s recycling bins. She eventually takes them to the return depot to cash in. She’s not hurting for money. She donates all the money to animal shelters to help with surgeries or purchasing supplies.
You’d think a 92 year old woman digging through trash would be a sad state of affairs, but if her case you’d be dead wrong about her intentions. Your mom could be on a similar vibe.
Is her goal to make money? Or is it just an outing and a chance to socialise with people who share an interest? If the latter, then she may be getting everything she wants out of the experience so doesn’t see the need to change anything, in fact being more popular might be bad in that context. (Edit: just realised this is pretty much what one of the other replies asked, apologies.)
Otherwise, and I’m no expert at this stuff by any stretch, but purely from a casual attendee’s perspective, location is really important. Don’t be in a corner where there’s hardly any foot traffic, and if you can, try to set up next to whatever booths are busiest at your events - for the ones near me that’d be things like coffee, ice cream, bakery etc depending on time of year. They are always packed, and food/drink booths usually have people with a few minutes to kill while they’re waiting for their order.
If you have dozens of people milling about in front of your stall waiting for a coffee, the odds of someone spotting one of your products increases massively, and some of those may turn into sales.
So she wants to do things in her own way.
So you are her kid. And you want to do things in your way.
Hm…
Why don’t you both ask an experienced person how to do it in a professional way?
In good faith, I think this ask is taking the initiative to find advice from said experienced person, and then relay that information to their possibly tech-illiterate parent.
You may be right about what OP is trying, but I fear that the approach is useless.
What I am suggesting is not about how to go to market, but how to seek advice when it is meant for somebody else, especially parents.
I say they should go both, together to a trusted third person in order to hear the expert’s advice both, together.
I agree with you; if they have a resource they can approach together, it’d be much easier to be on the same page.
And also yeah, people tend to resist help and advice they never asked for to begin with.
You could help sell her crafts online for her on a site like etsy.
Or promote her craft stall on social media
If she needs the money that is.
From my understanding looking into it somewhat seriously and asking folks, I wouldn’t recommend getting into Etsy.
Between its endorsement of Ai slop and high fees, it’s gotten to App Store levels of “If you’re not at the top, you’re at the bottom.”
I’d still recommend local, but targeting events where people into your thing would likely go.
Without more details there’s really no way to make more than broad suggestions.
Why is she losing money right now? Is she not selling enough? Is she selling too cheaply? Are the costs for her craft too high? Are the costs for the craft fair too high?
Craft fair prices to get a booth are all over the place ranging from 35 dollars - around 75 dollars. She sells alot of random craft like teacup gnomes, resin, up cycled clothing, it usually ranged between those 3. We are total newbies to craft fairs and i just feel bad for her sometimes plus it alot of work to get like nothing back. I also feel like her pricing is also crazy at times but she trys to offers deals when the fair is almost done.
She dosent sell nearly enough from the around 5 craft fairs we have done over the years.
Have you tried doing a little market research to figure out what sells well at the fairs? Even just walking around and seeing what booths are doing or selling differently that seems to draw people in.
Sell weed
