Crafts and Specialty Shows

As another post in our series on treating your crafts business like a business we will tell you about our experience with this year’s Infinity Con in Lake City, Florida the first weekend in March every year.

Infinity Con Mar 2019 Vendor Fee $110.50

Infinity Con Revenue
Scrunchie $6.00
Earrings $12.00
Bottlecap Earrings $6.00
Bottlecap Keychain Charm $9.00

Totals $33.00 Profit(Loss) ($77.50)

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We were allowed to come over to the Armory after 4:00 pm to set-up which is always appreciated. We got the tent up, the tables with the table clothes, sheer curtains up behind the walls and most of the products set up for the next day. They packed the vendors in on the outside just like on the inside by that I mean right next to each other so we left the walls up and just parted the front of the tent and tied back so people could see in. The pink tent with the pink walls up cast a rosy tint over everything so it was a little hard to distinguish some of the colors.

The next morning we were up and arrived early and were ready to go after fiddling with the merchandise and displays for about 30 minutes or so. It was quite warm and them it rained off and on all day long. We learned the hard way the difference between “Water-resistant” and “Water-proof”. Let me tell you make sure your tent is “Water-Proof and you get sandbags or weights for your tent legs. We kept having to push up the roof of the tent on all 3 sides as the rain was pooling up and then leaking on our heads. There were big splashes from us every time we had to dump the water. Our poor right side neighbor didn’t have any sidewalls and we splashed them by accident the first time then they abandoned their tent space altogether until the rain stopped. We had 40 pound sandbags – one on each leg and the wind whipping around on Sunday caused some of the tents to fly up, again our right side neighbor didn’t have weights either. The across the way neighbor had a different person holding down each of the 4 legs.

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We got quite a few people visit us, buy a couple of things over the 2 days and take some business cards. I’m sure if we had more stuff in line with video games and gamers we would have made a little bit more money. We got to see all the costumed people, take turns walking among out neighbors and eating some of the fatty foods. They only had 3 food vendors and the coffee vendor quite after Saturday which was a shame as the vendors got free samples. The active role playing games on the side yard were fun to watch but we didn’t participate with any of the lectures or clinics they were giving.