A few weeks ago I attended the ACC Craft Show in Charlotte, NC.\u00a0 Today I scouted out the Southern Christmas Show, also in Charlotte.\u00a0 They could not be two more different shows!<\/p>\n
The ACC show was held downtown at the Convention Center, a newish very nice facility.\u00a0 Huge hall, never very crowded with customers, high quality work – with matching prices.\u00a0 Never did see any PR, ads, anything at all advertising the show.<\/p>\n
The Southern Christmas Show is held at the old Merchandise Mart, and fills three halls there.\u00a0 The line of cars waiting to get in was backed up about half a mile or more down the freeway – complete with tour buses of folks.\u00a0 We have had ads running in my area (2 hours south in SC) for several weeks now, plus ads in magazines, radio, etc.<\/p>\n
The SCS was wall to wall people – a mad house.\u00a0 And they were buying… and buying…. and buying.<\/p>\n
That said, the SCS is NOT a “craft show”, although it has craft artists; nor is it a “fine arts show” although there were painters, etc.\u00a0 It is a themed Christmas show, with a very different market.<\/p>\n
You enter through a “street” of Christmas windows; then past rooms decorated for Christmas by Charlotte area designers; then enter the show proper which has “stores”, “tents”, and booths.\u00a0 Some are by artists who make their own items, either entirely or mostly.\u00a0 Some are retail stores (Este Lauder had a store, as did West Virginia farmers, and NC Wineries).\u00a0 Some are importers; or gift shops; or food shops; or potpourri…. you get the idea!\u00a0 A real mish-mash of “stuff”.\u00a0 A few (very few) nice things, most was incredibly tacky\/country\/cheap….<\/p>\n
Price points doing the most business were definitely under $25, with a good bit of business under $50, and some under $100.\u00a0 I saw very little priced over that, much less being bought over that.<\/p>\n
People with items in the right price points were selling steadily though.<\/p>\n
I went with a group from the Artisans of the South Carolina Cotton Trail that I belong to, and we were scoping it out with the idea of having a group space for the show next year.\u00a0 We will be looking at costs and evaluating whether we think we have enough members who can do enough work in the correct price points to be worth doing this show or not.\u00a0 We have one member who had a double booth at the show (she has done the show for many years now) and she always does very well with the show.\u00a0 Her work is definitely production clay work, very cute, very good prices.\u00a0 So perfect for the market.<\/p>\n
After the very sparse crowd at the ACC show, it was very interesting to see the massive crowd at this one!\u00a0 Obviously, people are willing to come out and buy if you get their interest – and sell at their price.<\/p>\n
Not sure this is going to be the right market for me – I’ll have to debate with myself.\u00a0 I do sell a range in the right price point, but have been moving more towards a higher price point…. so will have to decide what I want to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago I attended the ACC Craft Show in Charlotte, NC.\u00a0 Today I scouted out the Southern Christmas Show, also in Charlotte.\u00a0 They could not be two more different shows! The ACC show was held downtown at the Convention Center, a newish very nice facility.\u00a0 Huge hall, never very crowded with customers, high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}