good elephant pottery

I'm back from my indie-craft experiment at BAZAART. It was definitely different from my usual show experience. I learned a lot! Some was good and some not so good. 

Here's what was good about it ... it was much easier to pack and set up for the show. Usually, packing pottery for a show is a complicated 3-dimensional puzzle, trying to get all of those pots of various sizes to fit into as few boxes as possible. It takes a while. Packing my simplified indie-craft inventory was a breeze. All the pots were small, and many were the same size. The entire inventory fit into two boxes, neither was full or very heavy. I was able to bring a smaller display. My usual display is three or four tables, plus two shelves. For this show, I brought two tables and one shelf. I only needed room for nine different items, and I could keep extra quantities stored until space became available. Two boxes of pots, and half my usual display fit so easily into my car. I could actually see out the rear-view mirror! Normally, packing the car is another 3-dimensional puzzle, but not this time. I set up the display in less than two hours. It usually takes 3 to 3.5 hours. I took it down in one hour. That usually takes 1.5 to 2 hours. Overall the good news is ... taking an indie-craft approach to pottery selling is a lot less work.

The show was very busy, about as busy as last year. I was writing up sales all day, and barely had a chance to sit down. But here's what wasn't so good about the results ... because all of my items were under $50, the grand total of sales just didn't add up to last year's. In fact, my sales were only 67% of last year's. That's a big drop! Last year, my sales included a $250 platter, a $175 vase, amongst other high-ticket items. This year, I didn't have a single receipt over $100. And that was the difference. Last year, the pricier items were 39% of my sales. This year, I didn't have them. 

Was it worthing trying? Yes, I needed to find out what would happen. But I'm not sure it's worth repeating. This doesn't mean I won't apply for other indie-craft shows, I still might. But only if I think my normal inventory would seem appropriate. 

This reminds me of one of my conclusions from The Hourly Earnings Project. When I compared the hourly rate of a big art festival vs. a small art festival, I decided that the small art festival was nice and easy, but anything worth doing takes a lot of hard work. I'll add a new, but related, conclusion now ... if you aim smaller, that's what you'll get.