The Kingsland Catfish Festival has been going on for 25 years in the small community of Kingsland, Georgia, which is literally a stone’s throw from the Florida state line-because of some sketchy directions given within my acceptance packet, I briefly ended up in the Sunshine State! My wife and I decided to try this show, because we are still relatively new to this ‘craft show’ circuit, and we wanted to see whether this Catfish was worth catching. Well, I don’t know….don’t know... The Kingsland area seems to be a nice town, with a middle to lower class population, which can sometimes be a bad omen for crafters. No disposable income, no sales. The weather was also not going to be of any help because of Hurricane Gustav, with rain predicted all weekend. Part of the appeal of doing craft shows is to visit all of the little quaint towns within the Southeast that we would otherwise never know exists, like Aiken, South Carolina or Hartwell, Georgia. Sometimes these tiny Southern towns represent Americana at its best, with quaint ante bellum town squares with country crafts shops and hickory-smoke pork BBQ restaurants. When I drove by various little neighborhoods around Kingsland, yards were filled with pink flamingos, Dale Jr. flags, and double-wide trailer homes. I try not to prejudge my chances or potential customers, but that little voice in the back of my mind said, “You may be taking a loss on this one!”

First day-The festival doesn’t officially open until 12:00 pm on Saturday, which is strange to me on a Labor Day weekend. Saturdays tend to be pretty busy, especially compared to a Sunday, when generally people are at church, or recovering from a Saturday nite binge-customers don’t tend to do anything until early afternoon which means even less selling opportunity. I had a scheduled setup time of 7:00am morning, which gave me plenty of time to scope out the territory. The show only has 70 crafters, so why did they have people setting up 5 hours before the show opened? Logistically, I know it can be a nightmare to get vendors set up at some shows, but this was a straight forward downtown set-don’t get it. I was really slow on Saturday, relatively speaking. No sales beyond $35 bucks, which is a bad sign for me.  I met a fellow crafter (makes children’s handcrafted wooden trains, bow and arrows, guns, slingshots, etc.) who has been doing craft shows full-time for 25 years, and he was not selling anything either. He packed up his 10x20 display and left Saturday, after the first day! The crafters across from my tent, who sold handmade stained glass, had made only $100 on Saturday, and she has products costing $1-$3.

Second day-Crafters have to be eternal optimists, it’s in the blood. CF organizers had set up an enormous stage at the front entrance of the festival, but did not have any live performers until Sunday-why not Saturday? It would've been cool to hear some Faith Evans at least, especially if you’re not making any money-music soothes the savage crafter. The festival is free, so there was a mix of people walking through and some did purchase our stuff, but most were just kicking tires and had no intent on spending on money on things other than fried pies, snow cones and the occasional blow-up Spiderman. I needed to make at least  $800 Sunday, and it simply did not happen. And then, at about 4:15pm, the sky open up for about 10 minutes...people scatter and all the craft tents hunker down for the rain storm-rain can kill any crowd, or prevent possible attendees from even coming.

    Second day (after the show)Well, tough noogies for me I guess… don’t think I’ll be back to the Kingsland Festival. I try to book decent shows by researching a little-we look at the festival website itself, the city’s chamber of commerce, The Southeast Tourism Top 20 Event site, Festivals.com, and numerous other sites to try to gather background information. Overall, many shows are still a roll of the dice. After you’ve battled the elements of Mother Nature, terrible spaces to sell from, unsympathetic show officials and organizers, revenue for crafters at so-called ‘good shows’ can change dramatically from one year to the next. You’ll make a killing at a show and come back the following year, even better prepared seemingly, and make half as much. Things change! This is my first show at Kingsland, and it may be my last- I will be packing up early, and hopefully spend Labor Day with my family and prepare for the next show, Aiken’s Makin. The Kingsland Catfish Festival-it's under 100 bucks for a 10x10 booth and its an okay show for local crafters and artisans with no travel time, but if you are a crafter traveling to Kingsland for Labor Day weekend looking for a sale bonanza, you might be better off drinking some muscadine wine and watching some football and spending the holiday with family. Or fishing for catfish!