Fresholi | Melting Pot Café

First one was not great, did okay and it was only 1 1/2 hours. This evening's event was much better takings wise and soooo much fun. Proper old style school fair, grotto, tombola, bottle stall. Lovely. Actually felt a bit christmassy for the first time, might have been the mulled wine tho!

So pretty good overall today ntb?

Yes, came home happy. Made a few contacts and gave out loads of cards too. Think overall my stuff seems to go better at craft fairs, but need to try these things.

What, no pics?  ;D

Are you feeling any better?  :buttrf:

No, forgot to take any pics, sorry! Feeling a bit better thanks, attractive swollen eye has gone, think I'm just knackered! Sure everyone can symapthise/relate, just that time of year. x

Poor you, Im glad you did well though and the xmas spirit was there for you, take care x

Glad it went well NT   :) :buttrf:

Can I ask how you get the contacts for the school fairs? I don't have kids so am out of that loop... not sure the school's over here do fairs??? I know my own secondary school (which is about 2 seconds up my road) used to do one but, from my recollection, it wasn't outside people coming in to sell things but more volunteers selling things that'd be collected or donated (and a fair bit of tat to be honest).  They did bingo though! My Mum used to love it!

Anyway just wondering how you get info on when they're happening etc.. could be something I could do to get a start into the whole market thing? (Still in two minds about it though).  

Glad you had a good day all in all!

All the schools I've done, 4 this year have found me, either from shows I did last year or through stock in local shops. I'm like you Honey, don't have kids so I wouldn't know either, our local paper is quite good at advertising things well in advance.
That said, I'll not be in a rush to do school fairs next year, last night was ok, but others have been poor. Good thing is they are cheap and I suppose there's always the hope you'll get trade afterwards. I chose to do them coz the demographics are right and young mums round here are usually stay at home types with disposable cash.

That's the thing Corrie, here they'd be pretty much the same sort of market and I know that people would be interested to buy too.  My BF is on the parents council (or whatever they call it!) at her local primary school and her and the rest of the "yummy mummy's" (as I jokingly call her) go out pretty regularly with each other but she looked puzzled when I mentioned school fairs so I'm not sure they're a regular thing here.  Anyway she took some of my business cards with her when she was out with them so I might get something from that. 

I thought that school things would be cheaper too - there are huge craft fairs on at the mo over here in a very large conference/convention type hall (the RDS for those in Ireland) but I believe stalls were over 1,500 euro for 3 days.. there's also a "12 days of Christmas" fair on in the docklands area but BF's Dad paid 2,000 euro for his stall there (he sells antiques and collectable coins).  Given my products are a pretty low cost item (compared to, say antiques and paintings for instance which are on sale at this other craft fairs) it would mean I'd have to sell a ton in order to break even... that means a ton of stock too which means a huge investment in terms of materials, then the cost of the stall (which is more if you want a socket!)... I just couldn't warrant it at this stage. 

Oops .. sorry I seem to have gone of the subject and ramabled rather a lot!!!

My kids are pre school, so I'm not in the loop either. I cherry picked schools I thought would be worth a try and rang round earlier in the year. They are really cheap and I've done well from the ones I've done this year. I would pick senior schools, the primary school fetes are chaos and mums who are interested are pulled away from your stall by kids wanting sweets. My 2 best fairs were the local private school and the grammar school, right sort of clientele! Also, they only last a couple of hours, so it's quite an easy intro. My very first fair was an all dayer craft fair and that was a bit nerve wracking! Go for it honey, I think you'd be great, you've got the smile and personality and that's half the battle in face to face sales. x