21 Facts About Selling Art at a Street Fair

Teastain Collection in Street Fair booth

The rain event day

You awake at 3:00 AM and check the weather channel online. Hourly forecast 6 AM – 2 PM cloudy, precipitation 0%. Today is a go!
Arrive at fair 5:30 AM. Everyone is sitting in their vehicles, engines running because of the cold, waiting for the drizzle to stop. The drizzle becomes rain and more waiting. It is now 7 AM, the street fair is open, no one is setup and it is still raining.
The wind becomes the second factor and all vendors become weather forecasters. Fingers in air, wind directions calculated and still…no tents setup.
9 AM. All clear and everyone begins setting up. Gloves, sheepskin boots, long underwear, and we are in the desert, freezing and working outdoors. (It’s hard to remember those summer days when it is 110°-120°)
10 AM and dear friend, the rocket scientist who works on the weather satellite, shows up at the booth.
My greeting and question for the scientist, “If the weather channel says 0% precipitation, why was it raining for 2 hours this morning? “
His answer, “remember the data is approximately 6-7 hours behind real time.”

The wind event day

Mid-day, early November and 40 MPH gust blows through the street fair.
Grab the tent and begin to pray that it doesn’t go airborne, even though there are 440 pounds of metal grid attached to the canopy.
A canopy from someone’s booth lands in the street in front of our space.
Finally the wind is calm, and the canopy in the back of our space is missing.
Oh yes, that windblown canopy lying in the street was ours; it took to the air, flew over our main canopies, hit a visitor from Australia and landed on the ground.

Bottom line about a being a street fair artist:

It’s hard work but much fun
The community of vendors become family
The returning customers are wonderful
You have incredible stories to tell
It’s fantastic exposure for your art
You MUST disregard the weather channel
Rain and wind are disastrous for artwork, jewelry and clothing
Working outdoors is a huge gamble.
If you’re a gambler it will work for you!

Have you worked at an outdoor fair? I’d love to hear your story. If not, I’d really like to hear what you think of mine. Please share in the comment area.

jackie February 13, 2010: Debbie, you have wonderfully described the trials of showing and selling outdoors. It’s the most fun, and definitely has it’s many, many problems. But…like everyone that does outdoor events, we wouldn’t give them up. The benefits outweigh the days of trials. And…hopefully the bad days are few and far between. Thanks for stopping by and sharing. Jackie
Debbie Moyer February 11, 2010: Got to tell you I had to chuckle when I read your post. Boy, how many times have all been thru it. Did a show last year that had wind gusts of 30 – 40 MPH – fortunately we were able to park our vehicles behind our tents. Tied off the top of the tent – 1 corner to my vehicle, the other back corner to the vehicle of the artist next to me. In front I tied to trees – kept the tent steady and prevented it from blowing away. That was on Saturday. Sales were off and on – did okay though. It rained off & on, however it was still warm, a gentle rain, and people came prepared with light slickers & umbrellas, some just walked around as if there was no rain at all. On Sunday morning, we woke to beautiful, clear blue skys. Glorious. Started off with a bang, really selling. The forecast was for clear skies all day long. We all celebrated. Evidently we brought the wammy down upon ourselves. About noon, the skies clouded up & the rain began to come down. Now, this was not a gently rain, it poured buckets. It kept up for about 20 minutes straight. There was so much rain that many booths got flooded with about 3 to 4 inches of standing water. Incidently, when I first checked in to set up on friday night, I had been assigned a certain booth spot. The night before we could set up, it rained, so they moved me because the spot had flooded – thank heavens they did). I was lucky and only had a little bit of standing water at the back of my booth so nothing got really wet – I had stacked my plastic containers there, so everything was okay. Well, it cleared up again, customers coming back out of their vehicles. Nice for about 1/2 hr – woops! here come the rains again – same thing, pouring. This went on until about 3 in the afternoon. (The show closed at 4:00 pm). Finally stopped raining, people began packing up – tent top, sidewalls wet as can be. Finally get my vehicle loaded up. Well, wouldn’t you know – the sun came out – beautiful. The rest of the day was gorgeous. Oh, the trials & tribulations that we go through. Isn’t it fun!!!!
Debbie
jackie January 6, 2010: Chris: I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your compliment on my writing. When the compliment comes from the best read person I know, that’s a compliment that I take very seriously.

I am so pleased that you can hear my voice. I’m talking to you and all of my friends as I write, and it’s very heartwarming to know that you can hear me.

Keep reading, no more compliments necessary