A Surprise Benefit of Selling At Festivals

We recently did a one day festival in Los Olivos, California which is a cute country town up near Solvang.  Great little antique stores and shops and restaurants. Situated in the heart of wine country, Los Olivos is a small town worth visiting -  http://www.losolivosca.com/  

We didn't know quite what to expect with the street fair, but we set up our tent and jewelry displays and waited for the event to begin.

There were a few customers, mainly lookers who I call "bebacks," as that is a word one hears a lot from customers "I'll be back."  Anyway, the day started off with a parade of youngsters running and then a parade of jeeps, old tractors, and square dancers.  Colorful and fun.  

The parade didn't last too long and when it was over, we were in the business of being street vendors.  There were lots of people milling about and some came into the booth.  We had a few sales and a lot of lookers.  

As the day wore on, we realized that it would not be a great day for sales.  I think we made expenses - cost of festival, gas, and food - but that is all.  One benefit was that we'd spent the night with my sister Julia and her husband Gary in Buelton which is close to Solvang.  So we'd had a fun visit and here is a picture of them.    

As we were packing up at the end of the day, I was telling Steve that we could just cross "Day in the Country," Festival of Los Olivos off our list when a woman raced into our tent.  She grabbed a sea glass necklace, she'd eyed earlier and asked to try it on.  I helped her and got a mirror for her to look at how nice the necklace looked on her.  She bought the necklace and then turned to me and introduced herself as the director of The Los Olivos Nature Museum.  She explained that soon they would be moving to Solvang where they had acquired a bigger building and she wondered if we'd be interested in showing our jewelry in the museum.  Naturally, I jumped at the chance and we exchanged cards and phone numbers.  

Moments before the woman entered the tent, I had been bemoaning the day and suddenly, we'd made a sale and had the suprise benefit of being asked to be in a museum which was definitely a silver lining to the day.  So don't despair, if you have a slow selling day at a festival, you never know who you will meet and what opportunities lay just around the corner.    

Here are a couple of new pendants that we featured at the festival.  The red sea glass is very rare and it is wrapped in 14kt gold filled wire.

An end of the day piece of sea glass from England wrapped in sterling wire.  Note the tri levels of green.  

Fort Bragg Festival - Part Three

The sea glass festival started on Saturday with the hours of 10-5. We already knew where the sea glass museum was so we headed over there about nine to set up our tables and little canopy. (Note - the museum is only 1 mile from center of Fort Bragg. In an earlier post I'd said 11 miles which was my mistake.) My sister, Shirley was still sick as a dog and couldn't get out of the bed so we left her at the motel. Her husband, Pat, came with us to help set up. When there are three people helping set up it goes pretty quickly. First, the canopy has to be unfurled and erected. You have to watch out for fingers when pushing the poles up into position. When I've seen others erect their tents it always looks so easy, but for some reason I always find it clumsy and difficult - ditto with the tables that have those fold out legs that can be treacherous - at least to me, anyway. Okay, so I'm not mechanically inclined, all right. I couldn't go do a show by myself unless I just threw out a cloth and laid the treasures on the ground. Moving on, after the tables, we put on the cloths then set out the jewelry. Every time, the display changes as we haven't finalized a "look," not that I'm sure you can have an elegant "look" when you need to put lots of pieces on display. This is an area that Shirley and I go round on because she wants elegant and I want everything to be out so people have a bigger selection. So far, no one has prevailed in this argument. I understand what Shirley wants, but we're in a canopy with folding tables and I just want to sell our jewelry. Anyone with ideas is welcome to comment with suggestions.
So here is the table display at Fort Bragg. Note the front table higher than the sides, this was one of Shirley's additions as she'd bought table leg extenders to raise the front table. Hmmm? What do you think? Personally, I think the table cloth on the front table looks a bit big and messy. Here are some other shots of the display area.

We already knew that there would only be three of us vendors. We were the first to arrive and Captain Cass, who owns the museum, showed us where to park and place our display. As we were laying out the jewelry the other two vendors arrived. First to show up was Kira and Gary Ruvo. They were friends of Capt. Cass and have some of their jewelry in the museum. Gary is a silversmith and his work is really awesome. His wife, Kira, sells the jewelry and finds the sea glass on the beaches in Northern California. You can find Gary's website at http://www.theglasscrafter.com/ Here are a few shots of their display area -

Gary and Kira's display involved using glass boxes that hold their jewelry. The boxes look elegant and show off the pieces of sea glass jewelry, but Kira would have to open each glass box everytime someone wanted to see a piece of sea glass jewelry. On one hand, this sort of display really draws in the customer and enables the seller to deal really closely with the buyer. The downside is that customers can't handle the sea glass at will. The cases at a busy festival are great because they discourage stealing when you can't watch all your customers at the same time. Pros and cons to our set up and theirs. I really like the look of their displays and of course, my sister Shirley likes that the displays were elegant looking.

The third vendor was Tammy Davis. She lives in Fort Bragg and sells sea glass jewelry, jewelry grade sea glass in bulk, and sun catchers and more. You can find her website at http://www.mendocoasttreasures.com/ Here are a few shots of her display area:

Tammy didn't use a canopy and her approach to display is more casual and it works. Note, the wooden box holding earrings and pendants and also the rack. Tammy had an array of items displaying sea glass and I loved her little basket necklaces with sea glass inside and her fun leather and sea glass animal collars.

As you can see there were three very different approaches to displaying our sea glass jewelry and they all worked. We all sold pieces to the customers who arrived throughout the day. Captain Cass was also selling sea glass jewelry and art inside the museum. To see his work, please go to his website at http://www.glassbeachjewelry.com/

We had a lot of fun at the festival, met some nice people, collected sea glass on the beach and ate some great meals in local restaurants. Did we get rich? No, we didn't break even, but hey, it was a mini vacation where we made a bit of money, spent time with family and had a whole lot of fun. And looking at the photos now of the displays while writing this blog, I see that we still are on the learning curve of what kind of display is best.