Your Fall Craft Show Game Plan
A practical guide to choosing the right products, building your inventory, planning your booth, and arriving at your fall craft shows ready to sell.
Fall craft show season is almost here.
This is not the time to rely on the highly scientific business strategy of making whatever looks cute the night before the event.
The weeks leading into September, October, and November can be some of the busiest and most profitable months of the year for a maker. Customers are shopping for fall decorations, Halloween projects, Thanksgiving pieces, gifts, and the first wave of Christmas products.
The opportunity is there, but only when you have the right products finished, priced, packed, and ready to sell.
To help our Master It members prepare, we put together two practical resources that work together as your complete Fall Craft Show Guide.
Download Your Fall Craft Show Resources
Grab both resources now, then follow the guide below to plan your product mix, production schedule, booth setup, and show-day packing.
Save a clean copy of the inventory workbook before filling it out so you can create a fresh planner for every future event.
Choose What You Are Actually Taking
Start with the Craft Show Inventory Planner and Hot Sellers Workbook.
The planner includes hundreds of products from our catalog, including fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, seasonal, and everyday designs. Instead of staring at your file library and wondering where to begin, you can work through the list and decide which products fit your upcoming event.
Must Make
Your strongest products, proven sellers, seasonal necessities, or designs that closely fit the audience attending the show.
Nice to Have
Products that would strengthen your booth, but come after your Must Make inventory is finished.
Optional
Make these only after the main inventory is complete and you still have production time available.
Skip
Not every product belongs at every event. Skipping the wrong products is just as important as making the right ones.
The planner also helps you track:
- Units already on hand
- Units still needed
- Products that have been cut
- Products that have been painted
- Products that are completely finished
- Hot Seller and Strong Seller rankings
- Links to available digital files
Build Your Fall Product Mix
A strong fall booth should include a combination of seasonal attention grabbers and dependable everyday products.
Fall and Halloween Products
Think pumpkins, ghosts, witches, scarecrows, fall sayings, sweater weather designs, football products, Thanksgiving pieces, and anything that creates that cozy fall feeling.
Seasonal products give customers a reason to buy now instead of telling themselves they will come back later.
Everyday Products
Not everyone attending a fall show is shopping for Halloween or Thanksgiving. Include products that can be displayed all year, given as gifts, or personalized.
Everyday products help you reach shoppers who love your work but are not looking for seasonal home decor.
Include Multiple Price Points
- Small impulse purchases for quick, easy decisions
- Midpriced giftable products for the everyday shopper
- Larger statement pieces that stop traffic and anchor your booth
A customer may love your biggest sign but only have room in the budget for a smaller item. Give them an easy way to buy something from you.
Create a Real Production Plan
Once you have selected your inventory, enter how many finished pieces you already have and how many additional pieces you need.
Then work through your production in stages:
- Cut the pieces.
- Paint or print the components.
- Assemble the products.
- Add hanging hardware or finishing details.
- Price and label everything.
- Package or stage the inventory for transport.
Use the Cut, Painted, and Complete columns in the workbook to see exactly where every product stands.
Plan Your Booth Before Show Week
Do not wait until the morning of the event to decide how your booth will look.
Think through:
- Where your larger products will be displayed
- How customers will enter and move through the booth
- Where prices will be visible
- Where smaller products will be placed
- Where you will complete transactions
- How customers will find your business after the event
- Which products should be displayed at eye level
- Which products can be restocked from storage
Whenever possible, set up a practice version of your booth before the show. It does not need to be perfect. You are looking for display problems, missing hardware, awkward traffic flow, and products that disappear into the background.
Pack with the Show Up & Sell Out Checklist
The second resource is our two-page Show Up & Sell Out Load-Up and Roll-Out Checklist.
This printable guide covers the five areas that can make or break your event:
The Infrastructure
Your tent, sidewalls, weights, tables, risers, tablecloths, lights, signs, clamps, extension cords, and display supplies.
The Transactions
Your card reader, backup payment method, cash, chargers, price information, QR code, business cards, order notebook, and required documents.
The Toolkit
Emergency repair supplies, including scissors, tape, glue, markers, cleaning products, safety pins, and tools.
The Human
Water, snacks, sunscreen, first aid, comfortable shoes, weather-appropriate clothing, and everything needed to keep the booth crew functioning.
The Logistics
Your wagon, hand truck, straps, tarps, flashlights, and everything needed to move your booth into and out of the venue.
Print the checklist several days before every event. Do not check something off because you know where it is. Check it off only after it has been packed, loaded, or placed with the items going to the show.
Your Fall Craft Show Timeline
- Choose your product mix.
- Review the Hot Sellers and Strong Sellers.
- Assign priorities in the inventory planner.
- Set your quantity goals.
- Order blanks, hardware, paint, packaging, and booth supplies.
- Begin producing your Must Make products.
- Start assembling finished inventory.
- Review your booth and display plan.
- Confirm setup times, booth dimensions, electricity, and event rules.
- Finish your remaining inventory.
- Price and label every product.
- Test your card reader and backup payment method.
- Charge your battery banks.
- Print signs and QR codes.
- Begin working through the packing checklist.
- Load the vehicle in the order you will need the items.
- Keep the tent and booth equipment easy to access first.
- Count your starting inventory.
- Pack food, water, chargers, clothing layers, and comfortable shoes.
- Get some sleep.
Use the Two Resources Together
The inventory planner helps you decide what to sell and what needs to be produced.
The Show Up & Sell Out Checklist helps you make sure everything needed to sell it arrives at the show.
Choose intentionally.
Produce systematically.
Pack completely.
Show up prepared.
Sell out on purpose.