This past weekend (April 27-29) we participated in the Astoria Crab, Wine and Art festival for the 3rd time. This is a show put on by the local chamber of commerce and is very well organized with good communication prior to the show. Astoria is a small town in far Northwest Oregon that attracts a lot of tourists who are passing through town on the way to the Oregon beaches. It’s located very close to where the Columbia River dumps into the Pacific Ocean, so seafood and fresh fish are wonderful treats when visiting the area. This festival has been operating for 30 years and attracts local residents primarily on Friday and Sunday with out of town visitors on Saturday. The show includes local Oregon wineries, a couple of breweries, artists and gourmet food vendors. Art is NOT the primary focus of this show, this is not a show that works for everyone, but jewelry is small and easy to carry so we’ve had good results from this show in the past. The 2D artists who do this show and offer shipping seem to do better than those who do not offer that service. It is a show I hesitate to recommend to other artists because results can vary greatly.
Friday the show doesn’t start until 4 PM so you have all day to load in, or you can also opt to load in on Thursday. The Friday night crowd is not there for shopping, they are there to sample the wine and party. That being said, we did have our best Friday night thus far at this show, but just by a mere $50. The show runs until 9 PM by which time there are numerous patrons who need to be poured on the shuttle buses to go home. For the attendees there are some challenges for the show, shuttle buses run from the local high school and is provided for free. Parking at the fairgrounds costs $10 for the patrons and is somewhat limited. The lines waiting to get out of the parking lot on Friday night were quite lengthy making us grateful that our RV was parked on the outside of the parking lot and we didn’t have to deal with driving anywhere that night. The shuttle / parking situation does discourage some patrons from buying large artwork unless they can have it shipped or delivered after the show.
Saturday the show runs from 10-8 and is the day for sales for most of the artists who participate. Our sales were good this year on Saturday, but not nearly as good as last year. I feel I need to add a qualification here in that last year on the Saturday of this show we achieved our highest 1 day sales total EVER, so we weren’t going in with the expectation that we would top that. In fact our sales for just Saturday alone last year were higher than our overall total show average, so I was trying not to be over optimistic this year. So, while our sales were good, we were surprised at what seemed like a lot lower attendance than usual. I could actually see some of the other booths across from us for most of the day which has not been our experience the last 2 years. The last 2 years have been wall to wall people from about 11 – 3 on Saturday, not the case this year. Also, the sales we made were more evenly split between locals and out of town visitors, in past years the majority of our sales on Saturday have been from visitors from Portland and Seattle. Made us wonder if the high price of gas was taking its toll. Another measurement of the smaller crowd, lines at the women’s restroom was generally shorter this year. Sorry, I know some of you could care less about that, but with all the wine tasting, usually the lines on Saturday afternoon are way too long.
Sunday the show only runs from 11-4 and is a very quiet crowd, mostly local. In the past Sunday has always been our lowest sales day and by about 3:30 on Sunday we were beginning to think we were going to hit a new show low with 0 sales for Sunday. Our first and last customer of the day came in at 3:45 and bought 3 pieces causing us to breathe a sigh of relief that we didn’t have a 0 day. So a few hours of total boredom on Sunday with one customer in the last 15 minutes of the show. What a way to end the show. End result – we were up about 10% over the first year of doing this show but definitely down from last year’s stellar show.
Load in / load out is fairly easy with a little bit of a crowded parking lot, but a very flat load in / load out for dollying your stuff. Some vendors park around the building but then you’re parked on the grass or in mud and that adds a little more challenge to the load in / load out. We opted for a little longer walk to our booth, but it was all flat and on concrete. The show is held at the local fairgrounds in a large building with pipe and drape already provided as part of the booth fee. This is our last indoor show of the year and given that it’s held in late April on the Oregon Coast, it was great to still be inside, out of the rain.
The show provides the option for RV parking on site, however, we park along the perimeter of the gravel parking lot, in the grass, at the end of April so it’s a somewhat muddy camping experience at the end of April in Oregon. This year they pointed us to a spot that was impossible to level our RV so we spent the weekend feeling like our equilibrium was a little off. However, it’s great to have the option, the parking lot is across the highway from the show facility with a foot bridge over the highway so we never have to deal with driving anywhere once we’re set up and be concerned about patrons who have sampled too much wine.
Is this a show we’ll do again? Probably, it’s a relatively easy show to do, 4 hours from home and decent early season results when we have limited options for shows in this part of the country in April. Is it a show that works for everyone? No, I know of at least 3 artists who say they won’t be back, this was their 2nd or 3rd attempt at this show and the results just weren’t good enough for them to feel like they want to come back. There were also a couple of artists who have been there in the past that were noticeably absent this year, so again, not a show that works for everyone.
Now we’re enjoying a quiet week in a campground outside of Portland before we take off on Friday to continue our Oregon road trip to 2 new shows for us over the next 2 weekends.
