Finding Craft Fairs, Festivals and Events to Sell Crafts

Sell Crafts at Fairs, Festivals, and Events

Whether your handmade items include woodworking, jewelry, quilting, sewing, painting, pottery, or weaving, crafts fairs provide ways to show your products to thousands of interested buyers seeking unique items.

All craft shows are not equal. It’s important that you find and exhibit at shows that draw large crowds of buyers.

Large crowds are good but they have to be buyers to make the show worth doing.

For instance, country craft shows draw audiences expecting to pay between $5 and $50 for pieces. Your high end items may get ignored at the low price point events because their audiences are bargain hunters.

Juried arts and crafts shows attract customers who will pay hundreds of dollars for quality craftwork.

Music festivals attract huge crowds, but aren’t necessarily good venues for selling high end craft items. Many of the attendees are out to have a good time at a street festival, hear good music and drink beer. Lower priced items tend to sell better at these.

To know if a show is right for selling what you make, you really need to visit it first before applying for a booth — especially if it’s a local festival.

Observe the event crowd and note what’s selling. Will your crafts sell here too? Are others selling similar items to yours? If so, that’s a good indication the audience may be right.

Some show listing services like Festival Network publish reviews and rankings from artists actually exhibiting there. This at least gives you some firsthand feedback.

You can compare events to other fairs around the country. However, note that some reports may come from artists who got bad locations or very good locations so read more than one review and weigh them all before committing.

It’s always a good idea to preview any show yourself. See related article here on types of craft fairs, expos and events.

Start your search with the craft shows listings below.

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