Craft fair organizers and crafters report a variety of results from the front lines this fall, reinforcing that the new, post-recession consumer is shaping retailing beyond the mall.
Merrilee Miller, marketing director at Rockbrook Village, is interpreting the results of the shopping center’s Oct. 3 Apple Day Craft Show as positive. Traffic was down slightly at the annual craft fair, but the amount shoppers spent per item seemed to be up, she said.
“Interestingly, this year the crafters were amazed that people were buying more expensive things,” Miller said. “I took that as a bellwether for an improved economy.”
Crafter Chris Haeffner is less optimistic after seeing sales of her fabric purses plummet last fall. The Lincoln woman, who routinely sold 40 bags in a weekend, said she now is lucky to sell 10 or 20 bags a weekend.
She recognizes that her products, which range from $42 to $62 and feature bungee cord handles, could have run their course, as craft items sometimes do. But she believes the change is with shoppers, not vendors.
Consumers are not willing to make impulse purchases, they are spending less and they are not buying “frivolous” items, she said.
Others echoed those observations.
Using craft fairs as a gauge of retail trends is tricky, because no one tracks or publicly shares craft fair sales or attendance numbers, said Victor Domine, spokesman for the Craft & Hobby Association, a trade group.
Organizers often limit the number of vendors, so that figure isn’t a good gauge of crafter interest. And many craft fairs don’t track attendance, especially if they don’t charge or are outdoors.
Research from the Elmwood Park, N.J.-based hobby and craft trade group shows that crafting in general has remained steady throughout the recession. And crafting even has benefited from a recessionary trend of do-it-yourself activities and the recent explosion of DIY Web sites like Etsy.com, which allow people to sell globally.
“The years of everyone just doing gangbusters were probably in the ’80s and ’90s, and that was kind of unrealistic,” said Donna Huffman, who for 27 years has run the “Autumn Festival, An Arts and Crafts Affair” in Omaha with her husband, Jim.
“The artists and crafters who couldn’t adjust are gone. They aren’t in business anymore, or they retired and went to do something else,” she said. “The exhibitors who are creative and want to stay in this business are there.”
Organizers, from churches and schools to large production companies like Huffman’s, say craft fairs aren’t fading. Sponsors say vendor interest is steady if not greater, as people experiencing layoffs or pay cuts seek other income.
The Autumn Festival, which started Thursday and concludes at 5 p.m. today at the Qwest Center Omaha, limits the number of vendors to about 400 and turned some away this year, Huffman said.
“We’ve had more young people come into the business, just in the last couple of seasons,” she said, “mainly because, again, they are trying to have their hobby become a paying hobby.”
The Autumn Festival drew 21,100 people in 2007 and about 20,000 in 2008. Huffman late last week expected total attendance this year to be the same, plus or minus 5 percent, because of its reputation as one of the biggest regional shows and its low $7 entry fee, she said. It features vendors from 30 states.
“We haven’t seen a major drop in the attendance because we’re a good value for entertainment,” she said. “People might not be taking a big vacation, they might not upgrade their car. But they still can come to our show and make it a day, make it a ‘staycation.’”
“The picture is not bleak, the exhibitors are still making money, they are still out there coming up with something creative,” Huffman said.
Miller said that Apple Day, like the Autumn Festival, limits the number of exhibitors, so the vendor number of 75 to 85 annually isn’t a good gauge of interest. Her list of crafters routinely contains the names of 800 people, even after she sheds crafters she hasn’t heard from in five years. That indicates steady interest, she said.
Which crafts people turn to in a recession might shift, however.
The Craft & Hobby Association, which tracks 43 sectors, has found that during a recession, crafts that require additional spending see slower sales, while crafts that utilize “upcycling” and “repurposing” see increases.
Scrapbooking, which requires the purchase of new paper, took a big hit this recession, whereas sales of sewing machines and surgers — which allow a crafter to embellish or alter old clothes, for example — increased 5 percent, Domine said.
Whatever crafters do, Miller said, she sees no sign of craft fairs slowing down.
“For 10 years I’ve been waiting for the craft show phenomenon to fizzle,” she said. “And I keep looking for the number of people who want to be a vendor to fizzle. I don’t see it fizzling, at least at the level of Rockbrook Village.”
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