Some of our customers sell in alternative venues to artshows in order to target their customers. I thought I would share a couple I am aware of and perhaps it might help spark ideas for others. For example if you have
prints that are western, cowboy or military in nature you might consider gun
shows. Another example is prints that are inspirational in nature. We have one
customer that does nature scenes and will add inspirational text to them and
will sell them at spiritual and/or recovery conventions.
Cheers,
Mark
Replies
I know this is an old thread but I have sorta specialized knowledge here that might save somebody some money and time. I have been going to, and a sometimes vendor at, gun shows since 1965. People at gun shows are seriously focused and it ain't on art.
In fact, both sellers AND buyers are generally quite/extremely resentful of the trend of late to sell toys, beanie babies, commemorative plates, chiropractic exams and eyeglass cleaning solutions at gun shows. They make no bones about letting these vendors know they are not welcome.
You might ask, 'then why are the vendors there'? Because the gun show promoters need to sell all the tables and in recent years that has become hard to do consistently; so they reluctantly sell to all comers. The vendors of non-gun related items are there because the table rents are usually so cheap, they can't lose and will usually at least make cost even from a room full of hostile "customers".
Alternative ways to find customers strikes me as a good pursuit, but in this one case, I would bet heavily against you.
I think the key is that it would have to be related to the event in some way eg. guns - perhaps bullet casings made into pendants or ????
I found the same thing at horse events. I was asked to go with my jewellery to a showjumping event a couple of years ago, the horses were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars but the owners of said horses didn't buy a thing if it wasn't for the HORSE - they wouldn't even step into my booth. The people selling saddles, horse rugs and even bling for the bridles did a super show. Alternately the people with typical riding gear and western style clothing did well. If I was a jeweller who featured horse heads in clasps/pendants etc., and had photos of them up in my booth I'm sure I would have done OK.
Anyone think of some ideas for my type of stuff?
http://www.jendonald.com