Not what is Normal for a Craft Show !

Well what has been one of the stall-wart Craft Shows to start the Holiday Season for the past 5 years, turned into an almost total disaster this year. First, San Antonio has been without a good rain since Aug 2007, so what happens, on the first day of the show, it rains, not just rains but pours for almost the whole day. Now then there were 100+ vendors of which half were outside in tents. Since they had predicted the rain, the show hosts moved everyone from the fields onto the paved parking lots, which was a good thing because by mid-morning you sank to your ankles in the mud in the fields, but that also made everyone coming to have to park along the streets, so it became a long walk in the rain in gutter to gutter deep water. Other than almost no customers, those outside in the tents faired fairly well with the steady rain. Then late afternoon stopped raining and we had a decent crowd show up. No rain then again until about 0430 and that was a full fledged Thunder and Wind Storm. 8 inches in 2 hrs with 35-50mph winds. Of course with everything soaked from the day before, all this rain ran off. When we got to the show at 0630, tents and product were being washed out of the parking lots, down the streets and into a small stream, now a river, that was now coming up over the road. Many vendors couldn't get back to the show from their motels or homes due to high water in the low water crossings being anywhere from 2 to 6 ft deep. Only several of the big tents made for weather were still standing but everyones products were soaked and it was still raining hard until about 10AM. By this time most of the outside vendors had gathered up what was left of their tents and product and had left.

That left about 45-50 vendors in the inside rooms, and maybe 10 outside. Of those left in the room we were in, of the 17 vendors, 15 were jewelry and there were another 11 jewelry in the other rooms. Not a good sign for any of the jewelry vendors. Well lets say, of those customers who did show up finally on Sun afternoon after the rain ended and it got hot and muggy, they were buying big time, but spread them out over half the vendors (26) doing jewelry and the chance of a sale went down quite a bit. The wife only sold 3 jewelry pieces the 2 days and several of the jewelry vendors sold nothing, so on the 2nd day I brought in all of my unmounted pendants, CABs, minerals and slabs (usually only take a sampling so the wife has room for her jewelry pieces) and that made it a decent show out of it for us (but about half my sales were to the other jewelry vendors who wanted the unmounted pendants I had made) but a sale is a sale in something like this.

Next big show is this coming Sat, 1 day only and draws from San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, so covers a big area and lots of people considering these 3 areas make of 3 of the top 10 Metro areas in the US, so think I will be busy this week making up some more unmounted pendants and we will see what happens because word is out that the show host was short vendors, so cut off the restrictions on only so many in each product line, and I know she was at this past weekend show and signed up about a dozen of the jewelry vendors, so there will probably be 50 jewelry out of 200 total at the coming show, if she gets her 200. Now when something is advertised as a Gem, Bead or Jewelry show you expect all to be related, but at a Craft Fair you don't expect an abundance of any one item. So I am hoping the Lapidary, which is not a notmal item at a Craft Show, will be a big seller.

A picture of what between all of us became known as the "Encino Jewelry Pavilion". Notice the vendors talking among themselves or sleeping.

I know other areas of the country are having flooding and bad weather also and my heart sure goes out to them, but I will tell you, when you have gone 2 years without rain, and to get this all in one storm - OUCH ! Shades of the floods of 1998.

Willy