Monday 8 July 2013

A New venture

Well its been awhile since my last blog a lot has happened we have held 2 vintage fairs.  If any one say's it's easy don't believe em.  Norton Canes community centre was our first event.  It was also the first fair held there so lots of promoting and work to do for this one.  I do all of the organising and promoting myself a lot via the internet well I have to have some excuse for sitting on the laptop all day. 

The venue was found back in April of this year
 
The venue found now the planning measuring the room working out how many stalls we can fit into the room making sure every one has enough room.  There is nothing worse than going to a fair where your squashed in you can't get around the stall and me being on the plus size not being able to get behind the stall, because the organiser is too greedy and wants to get too many dealers into the available space.
 
The room is bright with easy access perfect for fairs. Measuring done now to the floor plan 33 stalls all with easy access with room for a 6ft paste table in front. 
 
Now all we have to do is get the dealers to stand the fair not an easy task I might add where do you find 33 people willing to take a chance on  a new venue.  This is where all my years in the trade come in useful.  I have lots of friends in the antiques trade some we have known for over 20 years and bless em they did us proud I didn't fill the stalls but we manged to fill  27 not bad for a first event.
 
The banners ordered and the first one up before the end of April
 
For 2 months promoting with a vengeance leaflets designed and printed 5000.  Distributed to every antiques and collectors fair we stood and some we didn't thanks again to friends in the trade who took leaflets to their fairs.  Adverts sorted in the trade magazine.  No end of promoting via Face book.  As well as this fair we had the Avon road fair to promote which ran the week after.
The week before adverts go into the local newspapers
 
The day of the fair glorious sunshine what a day wonderful for car booting but not good for indoor fairs.  Now the stress starts with a vengeance will we get any one through the doors.  There's a big fair on in Derby will they go there? 
 
The dealers did me proud they bought some great pieces. The fair looked fantastic really good quality.
 
All we needed were the people to come.  First trade buyers arrived at 9am then at 10am we opened the doors to the public.  No queue at the door just a couple drifting in was it going to be a disaster.
 
Slow is not the word we had customers trickling all through out the day by the end of the fair we counted 108.  Not good I would have liked at least another hundred to cover costs
 
Some dealers did ok others did really badly I chatted to all of the dealers on the day and can sympathise with them not taking any money, as the organiser I want them all to do well.  All I can say is hand on heart I did everything I possibly could to get people through the door.  The weather was against us the first really decent day of the year.  I know I would have rather been outside.  It was a gamble doing a fair during the summer months but hopefully getting the fair up and running during the summer will give us time to build for the winter months when they should be much busier. 
 
Not a complete disaster but for 3 months work planning and outlay the return was very poor. 
 
Look on the bright side we have another on the 26th of July all those that came hopefully will come again and tell their friends and bring more people.  I am still promoting this and our other fair.  I am determined to make this one successful it is such a nice venue.
 
I have dealers booked into do the next one so it's all go again.  I am glad that even though we didn't have a totally successful day the dealers who have rebooked do understand that these things happen and short of me doing a rain dance and praying for rain there was not a great deal I could do.
 
Lets hope the next is even better.