Planning your own holiday craft show

Inside the nitty-gritty of throwing your own local event

By Marilyn Perez
Published: December 4th, 2008 | 6:25pm

The holidays can be a stressful time for any person, especially if you run your own business. No matter what economic turmoil we face, people are still willing to spend — although they may scale back a bit. It’s nice to give shoppers alternatives to the department stores. Customers are thinking more about where their money is going and are more conscious about quality. Your dollar goes further purchasing handmade and gives the satisfaction in knowing you’re supporting small business.

As the DIY movement continues to snowball, more outlets are popping up for shoppers to buy handmade. As sellers, it can get tough to pick and choose where to apply as a vendor. There are the big shows that receive thousands of applications, but what if you don’t get in? What do you do? Gather a pool of like-minded sellers and put together your own holiday show! Such is the tale from the New York Etsy Street Team, The {NewNew}, a collection of independent artist and designers from the Metro New York area.

In Spring 2008, the group decided to put together their own craft show as a means to not only promote individual businesses but the team as a whole. Kimm Alfonso from Kimmchi.etsy.com is the team leader and sums up why hosting your own event can benefit. “The overall reason we decided to host our own show was because it was a logical progression from a group of locally run small businesses that do a lot of resource sharing and shows together as separate vendors to try and create a vending opportunity for ourselves,” she says.

The Handmade Cavalcade was born shortly after, and held it’s first event held in Beacon, New York in September. It was a test-run to see how the team would work putting together a craft show. It was a smaller show with BIG results. The turnout and sales were great and the work put in paid off. Alfonso was beyond pleased with the results. “Doing something like that on a small scale, you realize how much you can accomplish when you can divide up tasks and rely on a great base of different opinions, resources and talents,” she says. “With everyone pitching in and lending their expertise and time, we accomplished a great small show and realized the potential to continue to do so on a larger scale.”

Immediately after the success of Beacon, planning for the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade began. Kristen Course, Event Coordinator for The {NewNew} and owner of Cakehouse.etsy.com, tapped in to her resources and scored space at Knitting Factory, legendary nightclub in the Tribeca section of Manhattan. Sharing her thoughts on the planning, Course says, “The group effort on our fair has been extraordinary… Every one has chipped in — handing out fliers, designing graphics, courting sponsors, screen-printing tote bags, finding creative ways to get the word out in press and on line… it’s a totally homegrown event.”

Kayte Terry from loveforever.etsy.com led the advertising committee in getting the word out. “The difference in this craft fair really lies in the ownership we all took over the fair,” she says. “When you participate in a lot of the big craft fairs, it is mainly as a seller. In this case, we are sellers but also organizers — everyone in the group is responsible for the success of our craft fair. We all want the craft fair to be successful so we are all willing to put in the work to do it.”

Unlike other shows that host sellers from all over, the team wanted to stand out from the rest and emphasize supporting local businesses. The Holiday Handmade Cavalcade will feature over 30 vendors from the New York metropolitan area. Alfonso says, “When we started to try and reach out to businesses for sponsorship and advertising opportunities, we looked to locally grown businesses like Lion Brand Yarn and Sadie Magazine, and businesses servicing the local community — Yelp and The L Magazine, as well as Etsy — supporting the handmade artist globally.”

The {NewNew} also wants to support a local charity. A gift-wrap station will be run by the New York chapter of the the National Ovarian Cancer Association, with paper designed by The {NewNew}. “I hope shoppers see the value in supporting their local economy,” Course says. “Tons of people are hopping on the ‘localvore’ movement and doing their best to buy food grown and produced locally. Why not expand that to gift shopping as well? Put your money where your home is.”