r/CraftyCommerce

Just for perspective…I sell my knit and crochet items through consignment stores. Each store charges different rates and commission percentages. One shop is open Tuesday-Sunday 11-6. Another is open 7 days per week, hours vary, but most days are 11-7. A third is open Wednesday-Sunday, hours are 11-6. One of these shops decided to close for 2 weeks, with 1 day notice on their social media. No email or text notice to the vendors. It’s not the first time they have closed with very little notice. No mention of a rental fee refund to their vendors. Is this routine?

Hello! So I'm still fairly new to crocheting, but I've made almost 20 baby blankets and I'm not sure what to do with them lol. I was originally going to donate them but a lot of people around me are trying to get me to try to sell them. Do baby blankets sell and is it worth even trying? I have no clue how to go about this so any advice would be appreciated! I'm not really concerned about making a lot of money off of this, so I guess I really just want to know if its even worth my time to try. Thank you!

I asked this in another craft fair group a couple of days ago, because I keep paying booth fees on not much more than a nice looking flyer. The answers were better than what I had been doing, so I am putting them here.

The thing that came up most was not attendance. It was how long the market has been running, how long it has been in that same spot, and how many vendors come back every year. The returning vendor rate is the number that is hard to fake. An organizer can tell you a huge attendance figure and there is no way to check it, but if most of the vendors are new every year, that tells you what last year's vendors decided afterwards.

Second one I had not thought to ask: whether they cap how many of each type of vendor they take. If you are in a saturated category that is the difference between being one of two and being one of nine. Worth asking even when the answer is no, because how they answer tells you whether they think about the mix at all.

Third, go and look at it. A few people said attend it as a customer first, even if that means waiting a year. The cheaper version is finding vendors who did it in past years, usually through tagged photos, and asking them straight out. People answer that more honestly than I expected.

What changed how I read all of this is that a vague answer is itself an answer. Someone who has run the same market for eight years knows their returning vendor number. Someone who deflects to a big attendance figure usually has nothing else to give you.

I crochet for fun and to relieve my stress. and over time i have gotten pretty good at crocheting.

Several friends and family told me that I can sell my items. I do think about it from time to time but I don't want my crochet to be a business. I don't mind doing a once a year pop up shop and just sell what I made so far so I can buy more yarn but that's far into the future.

There's this lady who wants to source crochet key-chain and I mentioned that I crochet for fun, she wanted me to do some turtle keychains and I agreed to do it. However, I told her I don't know how to price my crochet, she mentioned that the person who tried to crochet for her was selling the keychain at $7 a piece. so I agreed to that price and I did a few keychains. I use 100% cotton yarn and it came out adorable and she loved it.

Then she started to turn into the client from hell:

• She wanted ALL turtles to be exactly the same size
• she wanted me to handsew her business tag to the crochet item and i told her that i'm not that good at sewing. She said that it doesn't have to be perfect but when i delivered the finished item, NOW she telling me that she wanted the stitch to be one line of perfect stitch and I told her again, I'm no expert in sewing, only crochet
• I crochet the length of the keychain to what she wanted. Finish the project and then she said it was too long and to cut it down, so i had to undo it and redo it to the length that was perfect.
• one of the keychains got dirty. nothing a spot cleaning can't do and i told her about it and she insisted that I clean it instead. I cleaned it because I just wanted to be done with the order.
• she wanted me to crochet a turtle with the worse color combo ever: bright pink body with bright green shell.
• I forgot to put in the metal keychain holder to one of the turtle and she pointed it out. I said, you can do it, and she tried to insist I do it because she doesn't want to chip her nails. I stood my ground and said no because I have no nails myself. she can do it. she drop it by saying she will get someone else to do it.

needless to say lesson learned and this stress was not worth $7 a piece.

I told her i'm out of yarn and will be busy with work. so no more crochet for a while. Then I learned how to price my projects accordingly, which I know will scare her away because it will be more than $7, minimum order of 6, no sewing of her tag and no revisions unless she will pay extra.

I'm sure she will suggest that if she buys the yarn I can lower my price or keep it at $7. But I don't want to because she will start to expect a certain number of keychains from the yarn and if I don't deliver the amount then I have to provide explanations.

what's a good respectful way to say that even if she buys the yarn, I won't lower my price and I don't want her yarn?

This has become the last resort and I hate to do this with my hobby, but that’s how rough things are currently. I am employed but in a workplace that’s posing risk to my health (physically and mentally), going against my ADHD & underpaying me to the point that necessities are hard to pay for. It’s resurfaced a lot of trauma so first and foremost, I need to pay for a union rep to support me, therapy, and to leave the workplace until I find something else (hopefully sharp-ish). As I said, the consequences on my wellbeing have been the worst, so this is currently my only hope

hi all! i had a large unexpected expense and i am trying to find some ways to get extra money to pay for it. i figured since i had so much yarn i would try to crochet some things and sell.

what projects have you made that sell well on things like facebook marketplace? are there any other options for quickly selling some projects? thank you!

edit: idk why yall are assuming im trying to do this as a job. i have a full time job but live paycheck to paycheck. i had something happen with my car that i just need a little extra money to be able to afford like tf?😂