How I faired...

I did my first of the three Christmas craft fairs on Saturday. It was held at Zeus Restaurant, on the edge of Huddersfield town centre. It took quite a lot of effort to prepare, but I was looking forward to it. My husband was kind enough to come along and help me out with the stall. Here's how the day went.

The morning started early as I got up at 7am to make sure I'd got the last few bits ready and packed up. Despite getting up earlier we still ended up leaving later than we meant. However, it worked out fine and we got there with enough time to set up before it started.

All set up and ready to go

The start time was 10am and it was a quiet start. I was expecting this to a certain extent because it was a Saturday and most people don't usually go into town to shop until after lunch. The organiser went out at this point with some volunteers to hand out leaflets to advertise. I took this time to speak to the other stall holders and look at what they were selling. It's always nice to meet other designer-makers and crafters, especially since most of us make things in isolation.




As the morning went on, the amount of customers didn't pick up much. The other stallholders took this time to look at some of my items. Luckily, most of them were interested in my work, and eventually I had an order, which boosted my spirits.

I had expected the afternoon to pick up with people who had come into town to do shopping. However, this didn't seem to happen. There were a few flurries of people coming through. A few were interested and took business cards, but no one bought anything. Part of the problem was that we were on the edge of town so didn't have any through traffic. Some friends came to visit in the afternoon through, which cheered me up, and even better they bought a some items too!

Overall I made enough to cover the costs, but I was still disappointed. I had hoped it would be reasonably busy due to the central location and from the advertising that had been done. One problem was that when customers did come in there weren't many of them. This probably resulted in them feeling like they were being watched or stared at, which will have put them off. I also wanted to try to engage people to keep them, but I didn't want to scare them off either by talking at them too much or watching them.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? How did you deal with it? Does anyone have any hints or tips as to the best way to engage customers without scaring them off?