When you walk through the door at a fair you probably don’t think about what it took to achieve the display that greets you.
And why should you?
After all you are wondering if today will be the day that you find that irresistible treasure.
And we the exhibitors don’t want you to be distracted from that thought, so our cabinets are clean and full of lovely objects, beautifully arranged to show them off to their best advantage. Lighting has been angled to create the right amount of light and shade. We are suited and booted because today is SHOW TIME!
But it would have been a very different picture if you had dropped by the day or even two or three days before.
The smart clothes, the make-up and the groomed hair replaced by trainers, sweatshirts, jeans and hollow eyes.
Empty cabinets waiting to be cleaned, positioned and filled.
Boxes on the floor full of pieces waiting to be unwrapped and displayed.
Blanket covered furniture randomly placed.
Paintings and mirrors stacked against walls waiting to be hung.
Hustle & bustle, exhibitors dancing around each other as they try to offload their vehicles.
Shouts of ‘Mind your backs!’ as porters stagger in with heavy boxes and pieces of furniture.
No exhibitors no boxes but still a hive of activity.
Men carrying large backboards to erect stands.
Men up ladders installing electric cables.
Men balancing large glass cabinets on sack trucks.
Hammers banging, voices shouting all orchestrated by an harassed fair organiser.
Is the stand the same size, shape and in the same position as the one the exhibitor booked – heaven forbid if it isn’t!
Is the back board the right colour – who wanted red, or black or grey?
Are the name plates correct?
Are there bags for the exhibitors and signage for the visitors?
Is the catering arranged?
Meanwhile, back at our respective places, we the exhibitors are planning for the fair.
How will we make the best use of our space?
We may have a plan sometimes on paper, sometimes in our mind's eye of how we will arrange it - where the mirrors and pictures will be hung, the furniture placed and the cabinets positioned.
How many spotlights we will need, do we hire or take our own? The latter, although cheaper, adds significantly to the set up and break down times as we must put them up and take them down ourselves.
Which pieces shall we take? Sometimes the location of the fair will determine that choice - some areas prefer more traditional antiques to others.
Do those pieces need polishing and cleaning? Once gleaming, they need to be wrapped and boxed to protect them on the journey and then packed securely in the vehicle.
Tick off the checklist of all the things that we need during the fair: lighting, bubble wrap, tissue paper, boxes, invoice books, card machines, pens, stock folders & books. Last but not least, what clothes do we need for the time of year and the venue (some venues are hot or cold irrespective of the season) and are those clothes clean and ironed!?
Have we got food for the journey which can be at least 3-4 hours, starting at the crack of dawn for those of us who travel the furthest?
But there is far more to a successful fair than the two - three days before the opening day and it starts with the fair organiser.
Their first task is to find a venue that is suitable in terms of its size, layout, location and accessibility with sufficient car parking. Stand plans must be devised to make maximum use of the space and to accommodate the different size stands that exhibitors require.
What layout will produce the best flow so that all the exhibitors are visible & accessible?
Where is the best place for the catering?
If the venue is a stately home, doors walls and contents will need protecting.
Book the stand fitters, the electricians and the caterers. Design and print complimentary tickets and send to exhibitors.
Organise publicity and signage.
And possibly the hardest part – deal with us, the exhibitors. Persuade us to exhibit at the fair. Accommodate our requests for particular stand sizes, shapes and different coloured backboards. Make sure that we are not positioned next to or directly opposite other exhibitors who sell similar goods. Deal with last minute requests and changes.
But of course, there is no fair without us, the exhibitors.
So what do the exhibitors do other than turn up and display their goods you may ask?
Well, our role is to make the fair look interesting and inviting and we do this by finding and presenting our goods to their best advantage.
Unfortunately, those goods don’t appear by magic! We have to search for them. This search is constant and starts way before a fair. It involves time, miles and money! When we started exhibiting over 17 years ago, we used to travel around 65,000 miles a year looking for stock and doing 3 and sometimes 4 fairs a month.
Having found them we have to clean and restore where necessary, research them to ensure authenticity, establish provenance and have all the information about them and their makers on the tips of our tongues, ready to answer your questions.
They have to be photographed, inventoried and posted onto websites.
Labels and information sheets are created.
All this before we even decide on our schedule for the year. To decide that we must pick the fairs that we think will be successful for us. Not all are for which there is often no rhyme nor reason.
Having decided on the fairs, we must choose the stand size and position that we think will suit us and our goods best.
Some organisers require us to complete quite a lot of paperwork (layout, risk assessment, electrical order forms, name board order forms) within a certain time frame. Thankfully these organisers are in the minority!
Having booked the fairs for the year, that schedule needs to be communicated to the businesses who help us do our jobs – the cabinet hirers, the electricians. They will need stand plans showing the position of the cabinets and lights as these are often delivered and installed before we arrive at a fair.
Accommodation must be booked (and sometimes paid for) in advance.
Complimentary tickets must be sent out by post and/or email before each fair. Those tickets have to be personalised and if going out by post, they have to be put into envelopes, address labels must be printed (gone are the days of handwriting addresses) and struck on together with the stamps. We send an average of 200 tickets per fair both by post and email, which can be extremely time consuming!
Oh, and that means we must keep our database up to date.
So, having done all this, it is set-up day at a fair.
Having travelled 3-4 hours to the fair, usually leaving home around dawn, negotiated the road network and traffic we have to set-up.
So, we off-load vehicles, make sure cabinets are in the right place, clean and with their shelves at the right height, set up the lighting.
Unpacking the goods comes next and arranging them as attractively as possible – when this goes well it is almost automatic, but when it doesn’t, we may rearrange shelves several times and take numerous breaks to refresh our minds and eyes.
Pieces out, put out the labels, pack away empty boxes etc, tidy the stand.
Then usually around 6p.m, we leave the venue to go to our accommodation, unpack again, this time our clothes, and then go out to find food.
At the end of the fair, we do this all again but in reverse. Packing up always takes less time but this time it is 5pm at the end of a 3-day fair during which we have been on our feet, using huge amounts of energy.
By Sunday evening we are tired and not always happy!
The stand fitters, the electricians and the cabinet hirers also must remove all their items at the end of the fair and sometimes this is going on around us whilst we are packing. After packing comes the drive home and the time to analyse the fair!
Once home, we offload and store pieces, wash clothes, write up accounts and stock books, update databases and dispatch any follow up documents for items that have been sold. And the hunt for new stock continues!
All this together with everything else that must be done when running a small business. You, the visitor to the fair may be forgiven for assuming that as you only see us, the exhibitors at weekends, our business is just that – a weekend pastime. Hopefully this may give you a different perspective!
.svg){kind=small}
