I returned to the Middlebury Fall Festival for the fourth time in September. There were many similarities to previous years (2013, 2014, 2015) but this year there were a few small changes.
Less Visitors
The turnout seemed to be down this year. I heard that there were some vendors that didn’t return as well. Friday evening was apparently homecoming at the local high school which probably stole some potential visitors. Then it rained for a while on Saturday morning. The sun finally came out and it turned into a nice day but perhaps some people had already moved on to other things.
demonstrating
Usually, less visitors = less sales. That was true for the weekend. I still sold enough to cover the booth fee and enough extra to make it worth hauling all my stuff over there, but it was by far the lowest number of sales so far. Plus I had a pretty good number of demo pots that made it home and into the kiln. So even if I didn’t sell anything it wasn’t a waste of time. And it’s always fun to meet people and talk about pottery.
New Pottery Wheel
Speaking of pottery, I made a fairly large purchase over the summer. I bought myself a portable pottery wheel so I didn’t have to haul my full size electric wheel to Middlebury and back again. Though it was a relatively large business expense, it is already worth it.
I set it up on a collapsible picnic table. It felt a little awkward compared to my usual throwing position but it worked. Plus I had half the top of the picnic table to put my tools and pots.
my view
special guest demonstrator: Troy Bungart
New Tables
Other than the portable picnic table, I also had two more 6′ folding plastic tables bringing my total to four. I only set up three of them but they are pretty convenient. I can fit at least two in my Civic even after I put my shelves in. And they have handles so they are pretty easy to carry, even two at a time. The 6′ size also seems to be pretty flexible when it comes to arranging my booth. The 8′ tables that I’ve used before only fit into the booth a limited number of ways.
Social Media Giveaway
I dipped my toe into the waters of in-person contests and giveaways. I didn’t promote it much other than putting up a couple small signs. I tried to make it easy to enter so contestants only had to take a picture of something in my booth, post it to social media and tag my account. For every 10 likes their post received they got an additional entry. There were 7 or 8 entries but two of the entries got a lot more likes than the others.
Thanks to everyone who came out to the festival, participated in the giveaway or bought some pots!