If you are like most crafters, you dream of selling out at each show you do along with all of the dollars that can bring.  Selling out is an awesome feeling but it can also bring some added challenges you had not considered.  Here is a story of what happened to us and lessons that were learned from it.

As you may know, my husband is a wood turner, The Lathe Junkie.  One of our most popular items are hand turned wood magic wands.  We have managed to develop quite a good following on Facebook as well as on his Etsy Shop.  Because of this we were invited to sell his wands at a Harry Potter event that was sponsored by our local baseball club.  This invitation came two weeks before the event but there was no fee so all we had to do was show up with our wands and sell.  Plus we got to watch the game for free so it seemed like a win win situation to us.  

The biggest challenge we had was inventory.  Hubby already had a pre-scheduled surgery the Monday before the event that could not be changed and would include an overnight stay.  On top of that we had just exhibited at a popular art fair and our online sales had been brisk.  We were down to only 50 wands without a lot of time to make more.  With a short two weeks to work with, he started working on wands as quickly as possible.  While he can finish one in a pretty short amount of time, standing for long periods was a problem before the surgery.  Removing listings from Etsy would mean that our shop traffic would suffer so sales kept coming in too.  The two days he was in the hospital, we had orders for 11 wands.  Luckily he was able to get back to wand making quickly after the surgery and by the time we had to leave for the event we had 75 wands to sell.  Not at all what we would have wanted to take but it was what we had.