Boom or Bust for 2011

I am patiently waiting to hear if my applications to professionally organised shows for 2011 have been accepted. I applied to the Merrickville Antique and Artisan Show and Sale for the last weekend of August. An application has also been sent to The Maker's Hand, a three day juried show in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario in November. And I sent of an application to spend four days at the Ottawa Originals Christmas Craft Show in early December.

The entry fees for these three shows, plus the expenses of buying the portable shelving units for my booth display, combined with the costs of buying more supplies means that I will have spent well over $2000.00 in anticipation of sales. 2011 will be a year in which I will either make a large profit or a huge loss.

Currently my inventory of baskets on hand totals around 120 units with a sale value of just under $6000.00. I plan to increase that inventory before the first of these sales to close to 200 units with perhaps a sale value of $10 000.00. My booth display shelving units, and Mazda, can hold up to 75 units with a value of around $3700.00. For the two-day sale in Merrickville, I would be able to take more inventory for the second day if needed. For the Picton sale, about three or more hours distant from my home, we plan on staying locally, not returning for more inventory during those three days. We will see if this works out or if an emergency trip back home for more baskets is needed.

Once we have the experience of these two sales, we will decide what to do about the Originals sale. That would be within a half-hour drive of my home. Anne is thinking we should book into the downtown Westin hotel with accumulated points so as to ease the stress of a four day sale. I would prefer to make this decision after we see how we do at the other sales first. It would be great if sales take off to use the accumulated points for a rewarding vacation later!

So, by Christmas 2011, I will either have a studio overflowing with almost 200 unsold baskets or a studio looking a little bare. We will see which it will be.