The show was a disaster. I grossed $32 after the entry fee was covered. The promoters said there would be around 5000 people coming through. I don't think even 1000 people showed up. Actually more probably showed up, but left because there was an entrance fee. The entrance fee wasn't mentioned when I signed up. My husband went up to the entry for a few minutes and said like 4 people came and left when they found out they had to pay to get in.
I'm trying not to feel totally bad about this. I met a lot of great crafters and many of them told me not to get discouraged, that this was far and away the worst show they had ever participated in. Also, the promoter told me that I would be the only soaper and there were 2 others. One was actually the husband of the soaper and he was great. I met his wife this afternoon and she was very nice too. She was only there briefly as her hubby said she was not allowed to work at the shows any more because she was a "soap nazi". Her soaps were stunning! Absolutely beautiful. She does like I do, a mix of natural essential oils and fragrance oils and colorants like micas and oxides.
We talked about where to get supplies cheaper and he prompted up to go to the Michigan Soap Crafters Conference later this month. The guy I buy all my oils from will be there and I can get them with out paying freight. Woo Hoo! Freight is like 25% of my cost.
The other soaper was kind of a snot. She was really about aromatherapy and said her soaps didn't have any oxides or micas (colorants) in them, only natural colors and just generally tried to make it sound as if her soaps were better than mine. Well la-dee-da. I tried to explain I wasn't going for that market but she wasn't having any of that. I also thought her soaps were kinda ugly, but hey, everyone has their own thing. If she talked that way to me I wonder what she said to the people coming to her booth. I didn't say anything bad about the other soaps to the people walking through...just to the rest of the world here on the internet! Ha.
Well, I'm trying to find another show to do and this time I'm going to talk to crafters before signing up to see if a show is any good or not. I'm hoping to find one for Memorial Day Weekend.
Posted by tonya at April 14, 2002 08:23 PMOh, that stinks! At least you can put it behind you as a good learning experience, no?
This may be a stupid question, but will the soaps and lotions you made for this show keep until the next one? I'm not sure if the natural ingredients would spoil, but if not at least you have a head start on your next big show.
Can I buy some soaps and maybe a lotion bar? I'll even send some in return if I haven't totally screwed up the batch I did this weekend (see blog for more info). I am about to do a lavender batch some time this week and maybe a plain batch but I'm totally out of molds (this weekend was so bad I threw away my last molds).
Anyway, shoot me an e-mail if you wanna offload a few more bars for some more $$ :-D
Posted by: Shetha on April 15, 2002 12:41 PM