Selling at Renaissance Faires

[Angster]

My wife and I have a booth at our local Ren Faire. It's fairly small with 75 or so merchants. Average daily attendance is 2500+ for the spring Renaissance Faire, and 1800+ for the fall Pirate Festival. My booth is still in the process of getting built, but it's intended to be more of an actual working leather shop, with repairs and alterations offered, custom orders gladly accepted, with a small amount of ready stock. And actually, there are several folk from my leather guild that sell through me at the booth, so I don't have to come up with all the stock (yeah!). And this is not my profession, it is my hobby. So I'm not as concerned about what money I make, more about the fun I have while there.

Actually, our best seller is a small strip of leather, 1.5 inches by 7 inches. We sell it for $2, and teach/help the kids stamp the leather themselves. They can use it to make a wristband or a bookmark (we'll punch either 2 holes or 1). While they are having fun doing that, the parents get to browse. The funniest thing for me is that we're about 50 feet away from the blacksmith, and they (the blacksmith folk) always gripe that we (the leather folk) are too noisy!

The stock that we have to sell is along the one wall, on the shelves and piled in baskets. Other, more expensive items and display items are gathered about the rest of the booth. Hopefully when I get the second floor and a permanent roof in place next year, I can set about with better pictures of how the shelves will be finalized, counters built and so on.