A couple weekends ago, CO Creative Cartel participated in our first Jackalope Fair in Pasadena. Pasadena is one of my favorite cities here in LA – great food spots, friendly people, and tons of things to do/see!
If you haven’t heard of Jackalope Fair it’s a 2 day event that is hosted at Central Park in Pasadena. Independent artisans come together and sell tons of neat stuff! Everything from jewelry, clothing, stationery, toiletries…the list goes on and on! I love shopping at these events because I get to support the small business community as I hope others will do for me.
It was a bright and sunny weekend (aka hot) but it was quite the experience! It was my first time showcasing alone and let’s just say that there was a learning curve to setting up my booth solo dolo. After day 1 was complete, I stayed for a little while to fix all the problems from set up and day 2 went much more smoothly.
So how did we do? Well let me just say, as an artisan you can’t really base events on your sales entirely. There are different factors as to why people don’t buy. If I did the event 1 or 2 more times and still nothing really came from it then I probably wouldn’t sell there again. But like I said, these events aren’t really a 1 and done type of deal. Sometimes you need to feel out the crowd that the event attracts. In this case, the event organizers were great and worked hard at promoting the event, they had volunteers that were very helpful (offered to watch my booth if I needed food, a bathroom break, etc.), and the foot traffic was good. If I just based the event on those factors then it would look like the event would be an all around success.
But bottom line, would I do Jackalope Fair again? Probably. To be honest, the show was a bit slow in sales but high in exposure. I just barely made enough to cover the cost of the booth. But my goal for these events are to gain local exposure, so I chalk it up to advertising dollars. If my goals were different and my focus was only on sales then I probably wouldn’t do the event again because I didn’t make much.
Those of you that do events like this, which are your favorites? I’d love to go support and check out other ones!
xoxo,
