Sales at artists/farmers markets

Hello,

I like to let everybody know, that this APUG site is fantastic! I have read a lot of information here and I am very grateful not to stand all alone as a film user.

Close to where we are located is a Saturday farmers/artist market.
The town is a holiday destination in the summer and the population is from fairly to quite affluent. We are considering renting a space (quite inexpensive) and display our b&w prints for sale. We do not wish to scrape the bottom of the barrel with low prices, as we operate our regular photography business in the area:confused:. Our reasoning is that it might give our business more exposure.

What are your thoughts on this?

Greetings from Canadas West Coast!

Marcus

Welcome to APUG.

Diversity is good and showing images outside galleries even better. 18 months ago I saw images in a park in Lima, Peru, and everyone was stopping and looking.

3/4 years ago I was asked to put on a 2 day exhibition a a Canal bopat festival, and wow far more visitors in 2 days than I'd have had in a few weeks with the same work in many galleries.

You can only try, under pricing is bad policy and actually leads to fewer sales. A friend had a framing business & gallery, he sold a lot of paintings & prints but at £10-£15 his B&W RC prints didn't sell, once he increased the price to £40+ they began to. (15 years ago so prices have changed).

Ian

I like to think that any exposure is good exposure (if you are selling images, not if you are taking them!).

If you have an existing business, then this is a form of reasonably-priced advertising. A small, professional-looking setup and appropriately priced prints as you have described, will be important.

Hopefully you won't have other booths selling images at lowball prices. I have been in a lot of outdoor shows, and almost inevitably there is someone there with $10-20 prints, maybe matted, somehow strewn about. Guaranteed they are losing money after paying fees, transport, materials, lunches, etc., but they seem to get a kick out of selling a handful of images. Now that I think about it, it might be an advantage to have someone like that - to highlight how good and professional you are!!

Thank you for your input. It is much appreciated!

Marcus

This reminds me of a pro from my local camera club. In Dec. 2007 he decided to rent a booth in a popular local historic market, which is popular with tourists and with locals almost year-round and gets a lot of foot traffic. His intention was to rent the booth for the whole month and get people to buy various sized prints as Christmas presents.

He did a presentation on his experiment as well as some of his images later in 2008 to the club. It turns out that he lost money on the booth itself, but he made some contacts with the facility management, and ended up organizing a photography festival weekend with displays and many workshops last summer, which worked out well. As well he got a number of referrals for his wildlife and landscape shots, and he said some people bought from him after the fact.

So, it may be worth it in advertising and/or making contacts even if you don't sell anything.