Stephanie's Studio

For about five days, I’ve been sitting on uncomfortable feelings raised by the most recent craft fair I attended , which was last Saturday 12/10/11.   Usually the organizers will want you to become successful at their venue because that way we are happy and more willing to come back to support the fair next year, as well as recommending it to other artisans.   So, usually steps are taken to assure the success of the show, advertising, outreach, emails, and good signage and even how the artisans are placed.   This was a brand new fair in the city of Chicago’s north side at a place called Flourish Studios.   It was held in a spectacular store-like space that must have been 10,000 square foot on each floor.   The huge problems for the artisans is that customers would have to walk through a full store of other artists and artisans work on that first floor, find the stairs, walk up the stairs and then come into one of the two small rooms to see what we were offeri...