Philadelphia street and skyline scape and full booth set up.

Hi to Everyone who has been reading and commenting and emailing – it has been wonderful knowing you all are out there rooting for me and waiting to hear how it went.  The hard part?  Where to start.

I kept great notes – stream of consciousness by the 4th day.  I’m going to share bits and pieces of things over the next few days because in trying to find out more about this show prior to going, I discovered not many people are writing about it.  And they should be – if not for themselves, then for others who are trying to make a living at making art and trying out all the different avenues available.

Overview

I’m going to guess that the first thing you want to really really know is:  how  did it go?  Well, it was an adventure!  And a disappointment.  The one thing I came away with was the lack of numbers of buyers.  While I’m sure there were lots and lots there, the place is huge and unless there are more than simply "lots and lots" – like magnitudes – the ones there are going to get lost in the space.

It wasn’t long into the first day that I noticed blocks of minutes passing where I didn’t see one buyer come by my booth.  So I went ranging around to see if that was just my area (waaaay back in the back, but between the food and the bathrooms – so it wasn’t all that bad a spot – and very close to loading docks so in and out was sweet).  And it wasn’t.  On Saturday when I went through the jewelry area, there were no buyers there.  And it was being noted by the vendors.  I got the comment:  "There are too many bored vendors walking around" and watched as vendors made body signals of "where is everyone" to each other.  Misery loves company so I returned to my booth not feeling quite so bad about it all.  Several more trips later in the day and in the ensuing days turned up the same thing – no throngs of buyers anywhere to be found.

I’ve been to jewelry wholesale shows – and there wasn’t room to move. I guess I sort of anticipated that kind of buyer response to this show.

I talked with some of the long time vendors and lots of new vendors (lots of new vendors because some of the old timers knew better?!).  The consensus was that traffic was definitely slower than usual but, as the biggest and longest lived wholesale show in the nation,  it was reportedly better than other shows, which had been even worse.  The whys were varied but came down to two:  the economy and it being an election year (always bad for business according to more than one old timer).  In fact, I only talked to one vendor during my whole time there who called the show a "good" show.  They were selling pewter torsos.  I wish I knew what they were calling "good" but I got the feeling it meant "made more than break even."  Another vendor noted that long time buyers buy first from their long-time suppliers.  If they are spending less, then there isn’t any money left over to buy from newbies.  Although those who bought from me were looking specifically for new work.

And I did break even, the last order in the last 15 minutes (really, the last 15 minutes) of the show did it for me.  But that is no where near the $19000 I should have made for a good show – determined by 10 x the cost of the booth ($1899 + costs).  I made exactly 4 sales:  2 on Friday, 1 on Saturday, none on Sunday, 1 on Monday.  The average sale was $1000.00 (now there’s something to be grateful for!) and the folks who bought were enthusiastic and fit my ideal client profile exactly.  So I wasn’t off in thinking this venue was where I should be selling.  I was off in the amount of traffic I anticipated, and in not understanding that my niche may be narrower than I originally thought (I would have a better feel for that if the traffic had been higher – but now I can only guess).  The little stories I made up for the pieces caught no one’s attention so the third day I removed them.  The detachable, wearable necklaces didn’t make any difference either.  Food, music, photo album and past PR/media were largely ignored (except the food helped me make great friends with my neighbor vendors and one person, who didn’t come into the booth, did stand outside and groove to Heart when that came on my music).

I was told by my area’s coordinator (ceramics) that the average per show is $20,000.  Sounds great!  But then I remembered that with "average" you could have one person making $100,000 and 4 people making $1 and the average would still be $20,000.  So perhaps artists should be asking for "median" sales, not "average."   And there are big sellers there, like Sticks, to skew that average.

The new lights I bought spotlight the work nicely, but take a very long time going up and down.  Walking through the show was an education in all the different kinds of  lighting folks use.  I’d recommend going ahead and paying for track lighting just for take down and packing time.  And a good cart (which I did buy prior to the show) is mandatory.  We got the whole booth out in 2 trips – and the cart moved like a feather!  Do yourself a favor and at least invest in a really good cart.

On a very happy note, load in day, February 14, was not only Valentines Day but also my 23rd anniversary.  Husband had these lovelies waiting in the room when we arrived.  I don’t know how I would have gotten through all this without him! (that’s him looking out our room window above)

thought for the day:  Dealers are so whimsical:  I mean, who knows who is going to like what?  I just tell people that I know it’s a humiliating, horrible process.  I don’t approve of it at all, the way artists have to trundle around with their wares…But the fact remains, that’s how it works and I’m not going to be able to change it single-handedly…. Lucy Lippard interview by David Troy, Artworkers News,  April 1980, 16, quoted in Hot to Survive and Prosper as an Artist:  Selling Yourself Without Selling your Soul,  by Caroll Michels