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Post by jdean on Mar 22, 2010 22:19:03 GMT -5
Heard about your web site from our neighbor vendors at the Jackson Dandelion festival. My daughter and I have been doing craft fairs for a little less then a year. It is nice to know that other vendors are not having great sales, thought maybe it was us. We're hoping to keep going until the economy turns around. I will do what I can to spread the word about your site.
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Post by RCA on Jul 22, 2010 21:18:15 GMT -5
At the Dandelion Festival 2010, I did not even break even. I got a spot on Main Street which was supposed to be a great location, but it wasn't. No crowd, no shoppers. In two days, maybe 40 people stopped by my booth. About 10 of them bought small, inexpensive items. I doubt I saw more than 1000 people total. It was never crowded.
More than one neighbor claimed they've done much better in previous years, that that 2010 was incredibly slow. They intend to return next year. I'm thinking about it - sort of.
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Post by RCA on Jul 22, 2010 21:25:00 GMT -5
July 4 at the Berkeley Marina - absolutely not recommended. The only time I saw a crowd of thousands was after the fireworks were over. I have no idea where the came from - I only saw a few hundred bodies walk by, and few came in to visit.
The lines at the food stands were always short - not a good sign. I made booth space and that was it. A 15 hour day to cover booth space - I can do that a Capital Flea Market (San Jose CA) in significantly less than 15 hours.
Easy access to the booth, nice organizer to work with - maybe I'll try other shows, but I will not repeat July 4. I asked around - the few vendors I came across who had done that show before only did it once - and will never do it again. Sounds like July 4 at Berkeley Marina has never been profitable for the vendors.
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Post by davejs on Jul 22, 2010 22:56:50 GMT -5
Hi RCA. Thanks for the scoop on the show. I almost did it. I had sent in my application but I forgot to sign my check. Oh lucky me. By the time I had gotten it back, I had found out about Foster City and did that one instead. However, had many problems having to haul my stuff out 100 yards. You can read the review on my website (staringvendors.com) about it.
Anyhow, Berkeley sounds like such a disappointment. I'm very sorry to hear that you and the other's did so poorly. That's a real shame. I would have gone nuts sitting there for the 15 hours. I guess it was probably cold and windy there also.
Do I know you? I think we have done a lot of shows together. I did the Dandelion in 2009 (and 3 other years) and my sales were pretty low so I decided not to do it this year. We had beautiful weather too and people just walked around like freaking zombies along with their dogs. I did not have a good space; all the toward the other end.
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Post by mcwier on Oct 5, 2010 18:01:20 GMT -5
ok people I know Im preaching to the choir here but I most say as a 30 year vendor, this is potentially the best site for vendors I have ever seen, and that includes many pay sites, I Found it by accident. Tell your face book friends and pass out flayers to other vendors at shows about this site. That Can Be one of your greatest assets.
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Post by davejs on Oct 7, 2010 13:04:48 GMT -5
At the bottom of the front page the 'names' of the visitors over the past 24 hours is listed. If you are not signed in, you are counted as a 'guest.' Right now, it shows that we have had 70 guests over the past 24 hours. I think the 'record' is 74. However, this number is deceiving and is actually somewhat less because visits by the 'bots' and 'spiders' of Yahoo, Google, etc.. are counted. Maybe 10-15 percent of our visitors.
Anyway, we are getting a decent number of visitors here but people are just dropping by and reading the material. In the near future, I am going to change the settings of this forum to require everybody to sign in if they want to read what WE have written. Be forewarned. Get your passwords ready, people.
There is a huge number of our 'members' who never post. I guess we would call them looky-lou's? That's okay because there are a lot of people who visit a great many forums and never post a single word. I want to reach out to all the people out there and encourage people to participate in our conversations and threads. You have a lot of knowledge and experiences to share with all of us. We can all help one another and you can think of this forum as being a kind of therapy where you can get things off your mind. You can let off steam. You can complain. You can share your wonderful experiences. You can convey humorous experiences. You can tell us about rinky-dink scumbag promoters or you can give kudos to those people deserving of such. Let's go people.
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Post by bakugan on Oct 7, 2010 23:37:25 GMT -5
Hi Dave, I am one of those guests reading your blogs for awhile and you know who I am...  just saw this post, I got it and I'd love to sign in and keep the blog alive... |
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Post by davejs on Oct 8, 2010 3:28:25 GMT -5
Hi Dave, I am one of those guests reading your blogs for awhile and you know who I am... just saw this post, I got it and I'd love to sign in and keep the blog alive... Thank you for signing up, Cherry. I'm trying to get more people to sign up and participate. We now have 98 members but only a handful contribute on a regular basis. Sometime next week, members will have to use their passwords to be able to read the threads. Hopefully, this will encourage more people to sign up and perhaps they will have something to say. There is a load of information contained within this board and it is all free. If 50 percent of the membership would contribute, this board would be utterly fantastic and would grow even larger. |
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Post by bakugan on Oct 13, 2010 0:28:23 GMT -5
Everybody enjoys reading your review so much...this blog is an asset to vendors. I am so impressed with your passion to keep this blog constantly update and alive.
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Post by davejs on Oct 13, 2010 17:59:25 GMT -5
Beginning Monday morning at 9:00am, it will be necessary for you to log in to read the posts. Hopeing to get more members to post and to get some people that read the board to sign up. This might be temporary or it might last for a long time. I thank all of you for your contributions and I am hoping to hear from more people on this board. Between Mon-Wed, we get around 70 visitors (+members) here. Deduct 10-15 of those for the search engines that drop by and we get 50+. During the other days, we average between 25-40.S
I would recommend that you sign in right now to make sure you know your password. Everybody will be required to sign in beginning on Monday. Thank you, Dave
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Post by suktexas on Oct 14, 2010 14:28:35 GMT -5
i think it is a good idea to login before they can read the forum. it is a free forum so login is not a problem to anyone. but whether they will post is a totally different matter. at least we can count accurately how many members are reading your post. Beginning Monday morning at 9:00am, it will be necessary for you to log in to read the posts. Hopeing to get more members to post and to get some people that read the board to sign up. This might be temporary or it might last for a long time. I thank all of you for your contributions and I am hoping to hear from more people on this board. Between Mon-Wed, we get around 70 visitors (+members) here. Deduct 10-15 of those for the search engines that drop by and we get 50+. During the other days, we average between 25-40.S I would recommend that you sign in right now to make sure you know your password. Everybody will be required to sign in beginning on Monday. Thank you, Dave |
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Post by cozysheets on Dec 12, 2011 15:05:02 GMT -5
Cozy Sheets here in rainey So Cal. Just joined your site, and it is much needed as vendors are always asking each other about shows. I for the last 2 years have busted my butt doing as many 5 to 30 day Fairs as I could find as well as Street Festivals, Music Festivals etc.
Im so tired of the travel and expense of most these events. The promoters are way too Proud of what they do which is not much for the most part.
I travel as far as San Fransisco across to Sacremento and even Phoenix. I do it alone as I am a single Mom (no child support from the deadbeat Dad) and I have 3 kids.
This time of year I feel like I hit the wall. I think I did 47 shows this year maybe more.
I reciently opened a store inside Temecula Indoor Market so I have a permanent location and hopping that will ease the show schedule this year as it is bringing in about $1000 a month so far.
Im exausted. I think I am cutting my travel down to local (within 100 miles) mostly street festivals and 1-2 day events with a few exceptions. If anyone has any must do street fairs or festivals please share.
I found a few shows this year that surprised me....Montrose Street Fair was amazing.....Crawfish and Lobster Festival by O Entertainment are super good!....Encinitas Fall Festival, Escondido Street Festival, San Marcos Street Festival, Carlsbad Street Festival, Clovis Big Hat Days, and crazy enough this time of year Hospitals are great...Arrowhead Hospital puts on a great 2 day boutique. I feel like my year starts and never ends...although I may get 2 weeks off real soon as I cant find anything but the Torrence Antique Street Fair for the rest of the year ugg! O and Amtrack Big Bay Festival is on Dec 28th in San Diego with 8,000 attendance (really?) just when we are all broke it may be salvation...Im gonna try it.
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Post by davejs on Dec 12, 2011 15:35:31 GMT -5
Cozy Sheets here in rainey So Cal. Just joined your site, and it is much needed as vendors are always asking each other about shows. I for the last 2 years have busted my butt doing as many 5 to 30 day Fairs as I could find as well as Street Festivals, Music Festivals etc. Im so tired of the travel and expense of most these events. The promoters are way too Proud of what they do which is not much for the most part. I travel as far as San Fransisco across to Sacremento and even Phoenix. I do it alone as I am a single Mom (no child support from the deadbeat Dad) and I have 3 kids. This time of year I feel like I hit the wall. I think I did 47 shows this year maybe more. I reciently opened a store inside Temecula Indoor Market so I have a permanent location and hopping that will ease the show schedule this year as it is bringing in about $1000 a month so far. Im exausted. I think I am cutting my travel down to local (within 100 miles) mostly street festivals and 1-2 day events with a few exceptions. If anyone has any must do street fairs or festivals please share. I found a few shows this year that surprised me....Montrose Street Fair was amazing.....Crawfish and Lobster Festival by O Entertainment are super good!....Encinitas Fall Festival, Escondido Street Festival, San Marcos Street Festival, Carlsbad Street Festival, Clovis Big Hat Days, and crazy enough this time of year Hospitals are great...Arrowhead Hospital puts on a great 2 day boutique. I feel like my year starts and never ends...although I may get 2 weeks off real soon as I cant find anything but the Torrence Antique Street Fair for the rest of the year ugg! O and Amtrack Big Bay Festival is on Dec 28th in San Diego with 8,000 attendance (really?) just when we are all broke it may be salvation...Im gonna try it. Wellcome to our board. Things have kind of slacked off here over the months. Shows have been pretty slow up here in NOCAL. I hope you have stopped by my website Starving Vendors.com, as there is quite a bit of info there. Due to my wife's medical issues, we have only been able to do 13 shows and none of them were anything great. Gosh, I'd love to go down there and try some of the shows you mentioned, but gas and motel expenses really eat into our profits. What shows have you done in Arizona? I was in Tyson Wells many times (until the tornado) along with Yuma, Havasu, Chandler for the Ostrich, Tucson (2 different lots), Parker and a couple other places. We had been doing county fairs in Oregon until my wife's problems. Anyhow, best of luck. I just wrote a book that you may find interesting, Street Fairs for profit, fun and madness. It's about our experiences selling at street fairs, county fairs, etc. www.streetfairsbook.com/index.html |
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Post by Evan on Jan 22, 2013 19:58:48 GMT -5
I want to start selling things at flea markets and swap meets. How should I start? Where can I get a resale licence, how much is it? Do I have to wait long for it? And where is a go. Place to buy in bulk? Thank You!!!
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just saw this post, I got it and I'd love to sign in and keep the blog alive... 