Art Festival Pitfalls to Avoid: For New Exhibiting Artists

I have been a silversmith and have been selling at art shows since early 2002. This article deals only with the negative aspects of participating in art fairs. There are great things, too, but you won't need advance warning to survive them. If you are beginning your career as an artisan, the information below will help you to avoid, or at least be prepared for and do your best to minimize, these challenges and setbacks that can have a definite negative effect on your bottom line.

Don't Go Into Debt to Promote Your Art
Dave Ramsey would be proud of me for that advice!

Some artists (a lot of them, in my experience) get into a catch 22 of exhibiting at a show, losing a little bit or a lot, and leaving that balance on a credit card in hopes that they can pay it off with the proceeds of the next show. After a few months of that routine, if there have been losses, they find that they are relying on what they make at any given show just to cover the monthly payments on the credit cards. They begin to rely on cash flow to keep them going. It's akin to putting money in a slot machine in Vegas. You may win one or two times, but if you keep playing the game, you'll eventually come out an overall loser if you are racking up credit card debt to finance your next visit to the casino.

An alternative to the above scenario is to consider starting out small. Only apply to shows that are near your home and inexpensive for you to do. When you make a little profit, use those proceeds to move on slowly to more shows or shows farther away. Using only your profits to market your work, you will build your business more slowly but you won't go bankrupt doing it.

Consider All of Your Costs Before Deciding Whether You Made a Profit
During slow times at art shows, artists visit with each other to pass the time. One of their favorite questions to each other is, "How are your sales going at this show?" When I asked that question, I often got an answer like, "Great! I have already covered my costs." When I pursued this discussion further, I would frequently discover that they were not being very realistic. I would start to enumerate all of my costs. As I named them off, it became obvious that they had not even thought about total costs, direct and indirect, but were actually talking only about having covered their booth fees.

The following is a partial list of expenses that are typical. If you incur them, they must be considered in order to gauge your profits: gasoline, lodging, per sale credit card fees, monthly fees of credit card merchant accounts, jury application fees (both for shows you were accepted to and those you were rejected by), slide preparation costs, digital camera expense, time lost from production or other income-producing activities, sales tax, cost of goods sold, packaging, tents, weights, parking fees, meals away from home, tools, ice chests, fans, special clothing such as rain slickers and hats, advertising, silent auction donations, pet sitting expenses, babysitting expenses, display materials expense, and the list goes on.

If you are not honest with yourself about whether or not you are making a true profit, you may wind up a large overall loss, and some unintended debt, before you realize it.

Does the Show Offer a Value Proportionate to the Expense of Doing It?
Building a business requires at least some repeat exposure to the same clientele. Art shows are usually held once yearly. If all of your costs for doing that show add up to $1000.00, for example, you are paying that amount of "rent" for the opportunity to offer your wares to these customers for 2 or 3 days out of a year (depending on the duration of the show).

Although some of the customers an artist meets at shows can become repeat mail-order buyers, this does not usually generate enough profit to change the overall bottom line. A good question to ask yourself is whether you would go out and rent a bricks and mortar storefront (with a tent top for a roof, in the case of outdoor shows) and pay $1,000.00 for the opportunity to sell to that same group for 2 or 3 days out of one year. In this scenario, your landlord also gets to set your hours and controls what you can offer for sale.

If it is a show that affords exposure of your art to a large number of serious art buyers, you might be very happy with that setup. However, you might want to at least investigate whether there are other, more profitable ways, to offer your art to the public. Some consign to galleries and some only sell wholesale or through their websites.

How Far Ahead Do You Have to Pay Your Booth Fee?
I have had to pay my booth fee as much as 7 months ahead of the show opening. Show application deadlines tend to arrive in clumps. If there is an average booth fee of $350.00 and an artist is applying for 5 or 6 or more shows at once, that's a large outlay upfront with no resulting income until the show opens.

What Is The Show's Cancellation Policy?
Every show has a cancellation date after which the booth fee is nonrefundable. The unexpected can always happen. Even if there is a bona fide emergency, if it falls after that deadline, the money is lost.

Show Promoters Are There for Profit
I was naïve about this one. I thought that the shows were all about the artists and that show promoters were mainly concerned about helping the artist do well. Unless the show is a nonprofit organization that supports the arts, that may not always be true.

In addition to collecting application fees, which are nonrefundable whether you are accepted to the show or not, and booth fees, shows almost always require that each artist donate a piece of art (often with a value of $100 or more) for a silent auction, the proceeds of which will go directly to the show.

Making a profit is good! I don't begrudge the promoter that, but if a new artist starts doing shows with the idea that every promoter will have his best interests at heart, he may be in for a sad surprise.

Before You Apply, Talk To Other Artists Who Have Exhibited at That Show
When you start to consider which shows you want to apply for, plug that show's name into your favorite search engine. You will get some search results that will include artists' names. If you follow some of the links you will be able to find contact information for artists who have previously done the show you are considering. Talk to them. Find out whether the promoters put on a good show. How far away from their booths must artists tote their show supplies? Is there any security? Did they advertise properly? Is the festival mainly a music festival? If so, there may be a small percentage of buyers relative to the overall number of attendees. Will the artist you talk to consider doing the show again? Are the booths so crowded together that patrons can't get easy access to the booth that most interests him? Are they experienced in knowing what it takes to produce a good show? As you do more shows, you'll have your own favorite questions.

Before I started doing this, I did some pretty bad shows. This practice saved me some mistakes. I didn't just interview other jewelers; I asked other types of artists too.

The Number of Show Attendees May Not Be a Gauge To Estimate Sales
As a new artist, you will soon learn that the number of people attending the show is not the deciding factor for how many sales you will make. It matters who they are and whether they are art buyers or just "tire kickers." Attending shows just to browse and buy a beer and a hot dog and to get the kids' faces painted has become a form of entertainment for people who are not necessarily art buyers.

The demographics of typical show attendees are something you'll want to consider before you apply. Find out if there are enough people in the nearby area that are likely to have the discretionary income to buy art.

Be sure you are doing a show that is right for you. If you show your gorgeous handmade pottery at a tractor pull that just happens to have craft booths, even though 10,000 people attend, you may not see even one customer who is interested in your art.

More About Silent Auctions
If a silent auction donation is required, the application may require the artist to describe the article being donated. That means that the artist must stop offering it for sale and hold it aside until the show opens.

In my experience, art show attendees think that they are helping the artists when they bid on these pieces, not realizing that the artist has been required to hand over a piece of his art and does not benefit monetarily from its sale. To make the silent auction aspect of shows even worse, the auction is usually held well away from the artist's booth. When the auction is over, the art patron receives the piece of art from the show personnel, with no contact with the artist. I have never participated in a show where the promoters made an attempt to tell the artist who had the winning bid or connect the artist in any other way to the buyer.

A good practice for me was to request that I be allowed to donate a gift certificate rather than an actual piece of art. I don't remember ever having a show turn me down on that. It is a much better prospect for the artist to handle silent auctions that way because the patron that wins the bid must bring the certificate to his booth to redeem it. This means the artist didn't have to take a piece of art out of stock and hold it aside, sometimes for 6 or 7 months ahead of the show opening. He meets the patron face to face and forms a relationship with him. This gives the artist the opportunity to talk to the patron about his work and show him all of the art he has on display.

Without exception, when I gave a gift certificate, the patron used it toward a bigger purchase at the booth.