7 benefits of participating in a handmade fair

Handmade Goods Fair is an organized, creative event where masters from different handmade spheres gather to present and sell their works, show themselves and their creativity, acquire new valuable acquaintances, and enlarge their client base.

A fair for a master is work and labor, sale and advertising, communication and promotion, self-fulfillment and self-assertion, a star hour or a failure.

A fair for a customer is an opportunity to buy unique and valuable items as a gift for yourself and your loved ones and to enjoy the atmosphere and aesthetics of creativity.

Usually, such fairs are off-season and thematic, held on the eve of the day of any holidays, significant events, and activities. They can be associated with the change of seasons (spring/autumn market). They are held in a shopping mall, on the street, in cultural and leisure centers.

Participating in a handmade fair is a great responsibility for a artisan. In this article, I want to reflect on the advantages of participating in a handmade fair from a artisan’s point of view.

Advantages of participation:

1. Atmosphere

Sitting at home selling your products online, you are deprived of the atmosphere you can immerse yourself in at the fair. And even if fairy magic goes around your workplace in the form of a cozy creative home/studio nest furnished with items of your creativity, you will never be able to create the kind of atmosphere made at a real handmade fair.

Home is home. No matter how good we feel in the space of our workplace, you can’t feel the atmosphere of a fair here.

A fair is where different creative people come together for a common purpose. And it doesn’t matter that each of them is a potential competitor. If you are a artisan, you feel yourself among YOUNG PEOPLE who are as creative as you are. And everyone needs to realize that they belong to a social group because only through social relations is self-realization and recognition possible.

The fair is a decorated museum. The organizers take care of the decoration of the event: they create photo zones and decorate the rooms according to the fair’s theme. Everything at the fair is subject to the logic of the conceived design: from the tables to the logistics of the passage of customers between the rows. The artisans perfectly decorate their “points”: decorated tables with shelves, lighting, stands, and shelves complement the overall concept of the artisan’s work.

The fair is interactive. I associate the scents of the market with honey mulled wine, rare coffee, orange and cinnamon, oil paints and ceramics, and decorative soaps. A library of scents unfolds in all colors.

Masters often offer to taste the sweets they make themselves, try on jewelry, and feel their wares. The auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sensations merge into a single image of the product offered, allowing shoppers to make a faster purchasing decision.

So, to be at the fair means absorbing the magical atmosphere of creativity that its participants create.

2. Sell everything at once

People come to the fair who are specifically interested in buying handmade goods. This is our target audience, with a need for a unique product. You can sell all of your items within 3-7 days of participation in the fair (especially during the days before the holidays).

Unlike sales in social networks, which, all the same, require long-term resources to sell large volumes – to buy, you need to think through the sales funnel, set up advertising, etc.

The fair does some of the necessary work for us, allowing us to sell products in large volumes.

That’s the ease of selling at the fair. You don’t have to work on the marketing side of the project for a long time – come, put the goods out, sell them.

– 7 benefits of participating in a handmade fair

3. New opportunities

People can come to the fair who can offer you collaboration. This can be bloggers or artisans themselves who may like your work.

Collaboration is how to scale your project and promote it on mutually beneficial terms.

What can they offer?

Participation in the fair is an additional source of advertising.

Big flows

For several days of the fair, many people pass you by. If only some buy, most of the audience comes into visual contact with your booth, your work, and your business cards. Someone directly communicates with you and asks for contacts, and someone takes information cards about you and your art. All this works well for “word of mouth”: one person saw, told another – passed on your contacts. And so starts a boomerang of spontaneous advertising from strangers.

Sales in action

And if you are at your point of sale to do their work (knitting, embroidery, modeling) and offer people to participate in this process, then gather around you even more attention.

Announcement

In addition, the organizers of the fair, for a few days on their sites in social networks, post all the information about the artists whose work will be presented at the fair. This leads to an active audience flows to your pages on the specified contacts.

4. Self-assertion

What is the most important thing for a creative person building a business based on handmade products? Self-realization and self-assertion through creative products.

By self-assertion, I mean the feeling of self-importance, the achievement of such results, which help to feel in their place, increase self-esteem and maintain their status as the individual.

Of course, self-assertion in creativity is possible without participation in the fair. But, in my opinion, in the process of actively selling at the fair and communicating with those who need and like what you are doing, Self-assertion is most fully achieved.

The social environment of recognition plays a significant role here.

– 7 benefits of participating in a handmade fair

5. Communicating

The undoubted advantage of participating in the fair is the fellowship with “your kind.” Learning about each other’s work and getting customer feedback is excellent. Through communication, it is possible to understand the demand for some kinds of creativity, establish future projections, and identify potential shortcomings and advantages.

6. Opportunity for indirect participation

It is possible to send a seller to the fair who will be interested in maximum sales. You can do the usual things in your creative business during the fair, and another will sell. This way, you can save time and increase profits by delegating responsibilities.

7. Experience and Portfolio

Whether or not you are satisfied with your Fair results, you will gain experience and the opportunity to include participation in your portfolio. Even if the outcome seems like a failure, you can take many lessons from it for the future. Experience is valued above all else. Regarding portfolios – if your potential social media buyers see that you participate in Fairs, they will have increased trust and loyalty to you as a artisan, and you will have increased status.

Thus, participation in the fair contributes to the personal growth, self-esteem, and self-assertion of the master. By participating in the fair, an artisan can sell her products in mass quantities quickly.

Promotion, communication, advertising, and cooperation in the social environment of the same creative people help to reach a new level of contacts, skill, and spiritual elevation, which is very important for future development.

Share in the comments, have you participated in handmade fairs? What experiences have you had? What can you add or deny to what I have named?