I continue to see an increasing problem of vendors not bringing what they say they will, or am I seeing an increase promoters accepting what are by their own standards non-acceptable vendors? Promoters, how can this be dealt with? The show I was at with my father this weekend made themselves out to be the strictest show around by their application wording, claims, and it's almost excessive rules, which they themselves did not follow. They claimed a morning inspection, which I never saw, and they claimed they would ask non-allowed items to be removed, which did not happen. Yet they even had many stands with VERY obvious retail. One that stood out were some South American's hawking an array of sweater-like, yarny coats. They had at least TWO 20 foot frontage booths (I only walked 1/3 of the event) and hung many hundreds of coats up, with some 'racks' that went 15-20 feet in the air, as sort of signs, so they could be seen down the isle, blocks away. I've never seen a promoter so obviously sell-out in my life. I can not see, how even with no actual inspection, how such crap can be missed! These 2 stands had their crap hanging OUT OVER AND INTO THE ISLE... For such a talked up event, I was left feeling sick to my stomach, wondering what is going to happen to the industry if promoters continue this trend. I think the every 5 th 'artist' being sterling silver forged jewelry or similarly non-handmade got my father's goat. That event will not see us again.
Promoters of top-quality, claimed-juried shows are only hurting themselves by having 80 great vendors and 20 crap ones when they can just have the 80 great ones.
Promoters hurt themselves by doing this because:
Events WILL loose some, if not many, quality vendors each year by allowing junk. I hear this from quality artists weekly and I know my family drops shows for this reason. Further decline will be unavoidable.
Artists that leave because you allowed in junk, WILL NOT return within this decade to see if you chanced to improve!
Artists gossip, often about shows and promoters that upset or disappointed them. Do you want this sort of publicity?
The top repeat and returning customers that a good show needs to have attend to stay successful know what constitutes quality and will not continue to frequent your show if they start to see garbage. The REASON why the top, desired customers attend juried arts and craft shows is that they expect to find merchandise there that they can not find elsewhere. When they stop making great 'finds' at your show and instead pass the time playing 'spot the imports', you have lost them.
I think most promoters underestimate the number and affect of the repeat top customers on sales. For my family, a very large & necessary portion of our sales at shows is from repeat customers. At the majority of the events my family does, there are inevitably women that come around and buy a few necklaces or a similar hand-full at once from us, then mentioning to us that they come and look for us each year to buy. They say that they always receive lots of complements whenever they wear my mom's jewelry and that they want to stock up for the year or are buying presents, gifts, etc. They usually mention they had a hard time finding us and, if we were moved to a new spot, that they were looking for us in our old spot and were worried we were not here! This is the kind of customers we need!!!!
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