Show Me Market

Craft Fairs, Vintage Shows, Farmers & Flea Markets In & Around Jefferson County, MO

Vol. I showmemarket.com
For Vendors

Was That Show Worth the Booth Fee?

Tell the next vendor. Seven questions, about a minute, and no name attached. The next person weighing up a $45 booth fee gets a straight answer instead of a guess.

Vendor Report Card

Anonymous · 7 Categories

Pick one we've listed, or choose "Another show" and type the name.

Rate each part of the show. Leave anything you can't speak to blank, and skip the whole thing if you'd rather only answer the question below.

All three are optional. Leave them empty and your report still counts the same.

We don't ask for your name or your email, and nothing here has to be written out unless you want to. Every report is held 24–48 hours before it's published.

How to Tell if a Craft Fair Is Worth Working

If you've ever paid a booth fee, driven an hour, unloaded in the rain and gone home with less than you spent, you already know why this page exists.

There's no shortage of lists telling you which markets are happening. There's almost nothing telling you which ones are worth setting up at. Organizers advertise attendance; nobody publishes whether those attendees bought anything. So vendors end up asking each other in Facebook groups, one show at a time, and the answers vanish into the feed a week later.

This is our attempt at keeping those answers somewhere. We vend at these markets ourselves in and around Jefferson County, so we know which questions matter on a Saturday morning and which ones are noise.

The seven things we ask about

Every rating uses the same seven categories, and each one gets rated Needs Work, Average or Exceeds. Plenty of shows are simply average, and that's a useful thing to know rather than a mark against them. There are no stars, and the only free writing on the form is three optional notes at the end that come to us and are never published, so nothing you type ends up in a feud with an organizer.

  • Vendor MixWas the show curated, or were there six other people selling exactly what you sell? Spacing, category balance, whether direct-sales reps were capped.
  • Booth LogisticsWas the space the size they said it was? Could you get near it to unload? Parking, electricity, load-out at the end of a long day.
  • Organizer CommsDid anyone answer the phone? Were the rules clear before you paid? Was there a real person on site when something went wrong?
  • Foot TrafficHow many people came, and more to the point whether they came to buy or came to wander. Promotion matters here as much as headcount.
  • Sales PerformanceDid the day cover the booth fee, and did you go home with a profit worth the hours?
  • AtmosphereSignage that helped people find you, bathrooms, somewhere to sit, and whether the other vendors were good company.
  • Would You Return?Definitely, probably, probably not, or never again.

What happens to your report

It comes to us, it sits for a day or two, and then it's counted alongside the other reports for that show. We publish the totals, never individual write-ups, and we don't attach your name or business to anything. If you'd rather your report stayed between us, say so and we'll keep it in our own notes instead.

Ratings are vendor-reported, so treat them the way you'd treat advice from the vendor at the next booth. Useful and honest, and still worth checking against what you find yourself.

Want to tell the whole story instead?Fair warning: it is extremely 1998 in there.

Enter the Review-O-Matic →