Havering show (by alaric)
We've spent today and yesterday running a stall in the craft tent of the annual Havering Show.
We had for sale some of my cast aluminium paperweights, and lots of things Sarah makes - Wigglypets, Fimo jewellery, bead bracelets, bookmarks, and so on.
Sadly, we made a loss! The crowd was conspicuously lacking our main target customer group - teenagers. This may have something to do with the fact that there was a fairground OUTSIDE the show, and the show itself cost four pounds to get in; unlike previous years, when the fairground had opened after the show had closed... it seemed like the fairground was in competition to the show.
We had lots of middle aged people and above, and young families with tiny children. The children loved the Wigglypets, and a few of them were dragged away crying by their parents - because few of the parents seemed willing to buy them for their children; perhaps due to the craft tent being quite deep into the show ground, so most of the children already had candy floss, painted faces, and balloons... and my theory is that the fact that most of the children ran up to the stall and picked up a wigglypet, only to have the parent yell "Don't TOUCH! PUT THAT DOWN!" at them, meant the parents couldn't possible "reward" the child for showing such enthusiasm by actually buying them something! We may have had more sales if we'd put them behind glass or something so the children aren't so tempted to disobey parental dictates :-/
Oh well. You live and learn. We picked up some details of other shows from neighbouring stallholders, so we'll try them and see if we get any better luck elsewhere. Ideally somewhere where all the teenagers aren't lured away.
The Family | alaric | 
Mon 30th Aug 2004 6:00 pm
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