Some You Lose

Look, I can’t say that I didn’t know what I was potentially getting myself into. We had a craft fair in my school a week ago on Tuesday. At £10 a stall, it was a pretty low risk investment considering that I had pretty much all of the stock I needed, nd two sales would put me into profit. In all honesty it wasn’t a great event. It was poorly attended, but even so, the sales made on the evening made a small profit, and a couple of sales made in the days afterwards when people who’d seen the stall decided they wished they’d bought on the evening made it slightly larger. Well and good.

Now, while I was there, one of the other stall holders approached me telling me about a local craft fair which took place yesterday. I won’t lie, I fancied it. It certainly held out the potential to reach a new audience and make the kind of profit I made with the first craft fair we held in the school before Covid.

The venue is in the neighbouring town of Neath. So, bearing this in mind I made a few sketches of local landmarks, and made prints and postcards of each. So it was already more expensive than the school’s one. Then there was the hassle of making sure that my public liability insurance is up to scratch. The stall itself was twice the cost of the school’s. What’s more, we were expected to provide our own tables, while the school had provided their own. Bearing in mind the possibility of doing future events, I bought one.

My daughter Jess and I arrived about an hour and a half before the doors opened, and I have to say it looked good. There were far more sellers there than any other event I’ve done. They all looked professional. What’s more, there were no other painter-printmakers there. I won’t lie, I was quite excited about the prospects for the day.

Now, if I’d had the kind of day I had for my very first craft fair in 2019, I’d easily have covered all of these costs and had a little profit on top. Well, I wasn’t even close. A combination of factors, not the least of which must have been the horrible drizzly weather, kept people at home. Or at least, it kept them away from the Craft Fair. The photos show how empty the place was at 1:30 pm, when it should have been heaving. This is not the first craft fair held in the venue, and most of the other sellers I spoke to said it was much better attended on every other occasion. It wasn’t that it wasn’t advertised either. The first hour pretty much told the story of the day. There were people walking round, but they weren't really looking at the stalls. This was because for the most part they were other stallholders. It wasn't a case of people looking at the stall and not liking what they saw. Hardly anyone looked at the stall all day. 

If these photos of the 'rush' during the craft fair yesterday had a soundtrack, it would be the sound of tumbleweeds blowing down Main Street. 

Look, I’ve only done a few of these things, but even I know that when you do one you’re taking a gamble. On this occasion I lost. I sold . .  . wait for it . . . nothing at all! Before you start feeling too sorry for me, I think I should say that the only unrecoverable loss is the cost of the stall. I’ll use the table and the insurance for other events. The stock I produced won’t go to waste and can be sold on Etsy or used in another event. I felt worse, if anything, for the lady directly behind us who was selling cakes. As we were packing up she told me that she’s maybe just about made enough to cover her ingredients. She estimated she’d put in about 36 hours preparing for the event – all for essentially nothing. That’s soul destroying.

One little irritation – and I warn you that this does not reflect well upon me, but I’m going to mention this anyway – was this. The event was supporting an appeal for a local girl to have treatment, and that’s admirable, thoroughly admirable. However, the lack of people coming into the fair meant that the people manning the buckets looking for donations really had nobody else to ask for donations, other than the stallholders. Fair play to the organiser, she came up with the idea to have her hair shaved off in order to raise a little more for the cause. She came round asking for donations – and this was about 3 hours into the fair. She wasn’t the first to come to the stall either. I tried to be as nice as I could, but my bottom line was – come back when . . . if . . . I sell anything, you’ve already had £20 off me. Yeah, I tried to say it as politely as possible, but at the end of the day a no is a no, and there’s only so much you can sugar coat it.