Wednesday, December 17, 2008

South Carolina Craft Shows: Your Hobby, Your Business

By Alix Montoya

You already know that your arts and crafts hobby is a great opportunity for business. You've seen the colorful and specialized booths in South Carolina art fairs and festivals and decided that you can do it, too. However, if you're thinking of starting out a crafting business anytime soon, you would want to know the risks involved and how best to avoid them. Here are a few tips to make sure you don't get burnt out on your business' first few weeks.

South Carolina crafting trade shows are a great way to explore the market early on. It gives you insight on competitive prices and other opportunities. you're going to want to try and set up a booth in one of these fairs and festivals to test the waters, so to speak. This is also the safest way to get to know the risks and problems usually encountered by arts and crafts businesses at an early stage. Make sure to try out small first on local fairs and festivals so you don't overwhelm yourself with big shows.

These trade shows are a great way to gain popularity for your products as well. If you give enough emphasis on the quality of your products, you can also walk in local gift shops and ask them to carry your handiwork. This is a good way to broaden your market and reach a lot more people and basically keeps you on top of the crafting business in your town.

You can also try distributing some samples to your friends, your co-workers, or your family. You'd be surprised at how much publicity this could give you and your business especially if you're really coming up with quality products.

If you have enough money, you can try to get yourself advertised in local newspapers or magazines. Leave your contact number, the kinds of gift items you make, and the specialty gift shops which carry them.

The Internet is also a great way of telling the world about your business. You can actually replace the magazine ad newspaper options and just jump right into building your very own website. Think of the Internet as a continuous arts and crafts fair and your website is your booth. So make sure to leave enough information, like product descriptions and contact information, on your website.

Another great way is to join online mailing lists, like Yahoo! Groups, which distribute e-mails, announcements and advertisements about almost everything under the sun.

I can't stress enough that in these kinds of business, you need to start out small. Investing a big amount of money early on can bite you on your back. The most important thing you need to remember is to gather all information you can first about the market and the competition because this could save you a lot of time, effort and money. - 15432

About the Author: