Craft Show Potential ???

[James A. Wolfe]

My wife and I are about to embark on Life 3.0 and will need to supplement our retirement income. We would like to make and sell engraved items at several craft shows and perhaps, the occasional festival or flea market. Does anyone here use their laser to create craft type items for sale in this venue; i.e. picture frames, personalized ornaments, tiles and/or plaques? Since we are not forced to earn our total income from this project and our overhead won't include a storefront, does this idea sound feasible? profitable? insane?

Thanx,

Jim

[Tom Majewski]

Glad you're having the same trouble deciding as I am Jim.

While I'm not at retirement age yet, I am in a position where I can reduce my income and try something different. Different as in doing something I like instead of just working for "the man"-lol. Hope you get some answers.

Tom

[James A. Wolfe]

Tom,
I'm not at retirement age yet but I'm at the retirement state of mind. My wife gets a small pension and someone told me a secret that is changing my life.

If you dont want money, you can retire any time you want.

Pretty deep, huh.

Seriously, we can live on our pension but not have any fun so we need to add around $10K to the pot per year to live in our RV and travel. While I could do that by being the Walmart door greeter, why not try to combine an income generator with the world's coolest toy? Our residence will be wherever we end up. Our itenerary is etched in jello so if I can find a craft that will generate those kinds of dollars in that environment, I'm covered.

Jim

[Brent Brod]

"itenerary is etched in jello"

LOL, I need to remember that one. That is great!

[Joe Pelonio]

Have a look at these, they might be helpful:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,320667,00.html

http://artsandcrafts.about.com/

[Jerrod Treangen]

I sent you some great information in a private message. Check it out.

[Laura Zaruba]

Hi Jim.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents for what it's worth. I did craft shows last year with mostly display items to take orders with very little cash and carry b/c I was just getting started and I did not want to have a lot of inventory. This year I brought the machine on site to do a small selection of items. It's a lot of work but of course I did much better when I had the machine there.

The biggest problem is not knowing what will go well at which show. I've done cake pans, ornaments, dog tags, etc. But, one show I sold about 10 cake pans then not a one at the next!

[Mark Plotkin]

James,

Just did our first "craft shows" We made ornaments from the scroll saw patterns and displayed our pens and other stuff. We did $400 on the first one and $ 200 on the second one. Both show were within 2 miles of home so on some of the custom items, my son sent a text message to my email and I laser the items(business card holders) and then delivered to the show. I think it would be better to have the machine on site to draw more attention. The table space was about $35 per show. So I would answer your question with YES there is potential. We mostly work on cooperate orders, so this was our first try at craft shows. Hope this helps.