It’s no secret that I love planning
and organising; lists and spreadsheets are my kryptonite. Combine that with
parties, AND crafts, and I’m done.
Having lived in London for most of my twenties, I was lucky enough to have access to indie makers with
original ideas and quirky products, pretty much whenever I wanted. The amount
of markets and craft fairs was unreal, and I was in consumer heaven.
By the time I started my own
creative business, I was living on the London/Surrey borders, and the
opportunities to shop small were diminishing. And then when I admitted to
myself that I really wasn’t a London girl any longer, I really felt like the
only way to reach independent designer-makers was online. I’ve always really
prided myself on choosing cool little gifts for people, that wouldn’t be
recognised immediately as being from x high street store, and aside from Not on
the High Street, there was nothing. Zero. Zilch.
So I thought, why not go back to
my roots in Marketing & Events (Sheffield Ski Village, I miss youuuuuu!),
and start up my own version of these awesome little markets, only OUTSIDE of
the big smoke? There are some awesome business models out there (Crafty Fox
being just one – but in London, yet again), but social media was clearly
showing that cool creative people are everywhere, so why not provide the
opportunity for them to exhibit a little closer to home? Lower fees, a captive
and ready audience, and enough enthusiasm to fill several airport hangars, let
alone a local function space. And so, six months or so ago, bolstered by the
success of Fickle Craftroom, and encouraged by my growing relationship with other
creatives and bloggers, I decided to start pursuing one of my ultimate dreams. Fickle
Fairs was born!!
I decided to run some workshops
in the lead up to a late Autumn/early Christmas fair, in order to drum up a bit
of extra local awareness, and carefully curated a calendar of various current
and classic crafts. Some of these were more successful than others (DIY neon
signs was a sellout, felt ball garlands a washout), but I kept on, reaching out
to other local creatives for collaborative workshops and projects, and plugged
my workshops everywhere I could. I actually even priced them far too low,
convincing myself that they weren’t for profit, just for the sake of building awareness,
but I enjoyed them more than I thought I would (my mum was a teacher, and the
combination of seeing the amount of admin she brought home, with my abject
terror of training anyone when I worked in Finance, has always utterly put me
off teaching).
I spent HOURS researching the
best venue for a craft fair, and finding talented local people to get involved.
We set the date.
It’s fair to say that I did feel
massively encouraged by the response – for 17 people to apply for a BRAND NEW venture,
willing to part with their own hard-earned cash and time, and so close to
Christmas as well, is amazing. They weren’t just any old craftspeople either,
they are all hugely talented and interesting. But I needed 30 people in order
to be able to afford the venue, table hire, insurance and some advertising.
I could have accepted the 17 and
gone with a smaller venue, but for want of a better phrase, it would have felt
a bit meh. In order to draw people in to actually SHOP, rather than simply
chancing upon a side room in a café (or whatever we’d have ended up with), we
needed a larger-scale event. If people were putting their faith in me to promote
their businesses, offer drop-in workshops, and make sales, I owed them better
than that. If I wasn’t able to afford a wide-spread marking campaign then no
matter how many stallholders we had, it would have fallen flat. I would have
been out of pocket, and people would have lost faith.
This time, although it was a
difficult decision, I ultimately knew when to say no, even when it felt a bit
humiliating, and I was turning my back on a long-held dream. But when I try
again, I will have learned a little more. I still feel passionately about
bringing the quirky outside of London, but maybe Fickle Fairs needs to grow a
bit more, get a bit braver about reaching out, asking for advice from the
bigger boys. Next time it will work.
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