Today, we finished the final holiday arts and crafts market of 2024!
After a rather poor first day, we did a little bit better on the second day, but the event still ended up with our sales being about 20% lower than they were in 2023.
In other words, the show was mildly disappointing but not a complete disaster.
That particular outcome seems to have been the consistent order of the day for virtually all of 2024. Arts and crafts events, festivals, online sales, marketing, and pretty much everything else has either been about the same as last year or disappointingly below last year.
Part of me has a feeling that what we're looking at here is just the overall economy not being very good, at least compared to what the official channels is saying about the economy. I think the real economy — as it is being experienced by people at street level —is a lot worse than what official government figures say.
Without getting too political here, I am reminded that when we talk about "the economy" we're generally not talking about individual incomes and successes, but corporate profits on a large scale. In this day and age those two are massively disconnected.
But getting back to the show, it was nice to see a lot of old friends and meet some new faces as well. The items that did sell well were interestingly predictable, and the show was primarily marked by the fact that we didn't really make a single high dollar sale whereas in the past we have historically made two or three at every event we go to. This suggests to me that people are willing to buy things and spend the money as long as they don't have to spend very much of it.
Now I get to look forward to what is next, which will include some planning for what we can do to make 2025 a better year.
We have now been back to work since all the COVID nonsense for a couple of years and things on that front at least are starting to look a little bit more solid.
That tough nut I have been working on for a very long time, namely how to improve online sales, has still not been cracked and that's going to be the main task for 2025.
Regardless, all our show stuff is now back home again and mostly packed away for the next time we get to use it in spring. I need to take an assessment of our overall stock and see where the holes are that need to be filled in. I also need to check the back end of our online stores and remove items that have sold and see what I have that's been made recently, but not yet listed for sale.
If there's anything I can say about what I'm planning to do in 2025 it would be to be better and more persistent when it comes to social media marketing. Hive is certainly a lovely community and I have fun writing my art and creativity blog here but it is not a venue with a broad reach to many thousands of people, and that's really what I need to go for next.
For now, though, I'm going to go and rest my weary bones and maybe do another update later this week!
In other news — of no particular import to anyone except me — this also happens to be my 300th creativity blog post here on Hive!
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