Put my best small piece at the front of the booth and it sold in the first hour. The other 30 paintings sat there all weekend.
Set up at a local fair this past Saturday and made a dumb mistake. I hung my favorite little still life right at the front of the booth, eye level, where everyone turns the corner. It sold before 10am. Great, right? Except the next 31 paintings just sat there for the rest of the day. The piece that would have pulled people deeper into the booth was gone before the crowd even showed up.
I did the math on the way home. Sold one $65 piece and maybe 4 greetings cards. Meanwhile the booth next to me, a jewelry maker, had her whole display set up so there was no single focal point, and she was busy all afternoon.
I think I keep treating this like a gallery wall when it's really a storefront. People browse the front, something catches them, they step in, they stay. Next fair I'm putting the good stuff in the middle and keeping the doorway bits simple. Anyone else hit this? Or am I overthinking crowds that mostly want a free mint?
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Learned that one the hard way too, years back. Put the piece I was proudest of right at the door of the studio and it went the first weekend. Spent the next two months showing people something that was fine but not the thing.
The way I think about it now, you don't hang the anchor piece at the front. You hang the second-best thing there. Something good enough to stop them, and then the real one waits further in. They walk past the good to find the better.
The jewelry maker had the right instinct even if she didn't think of it in those terms. A booth needs a path through it. If everything's visible from the corner, there's no reason to step inside.
Ha, the studio door version of it. That's even worse because you had to look at it all the time, not just for a weekend.
"That's not supposed to be the one that gets sold first", that's the whole thing in one sentence. I kept trying to figure out what I did wrong on the drive home and I think I just wanted people to see the good stuff immediately. But you're right, the strong piece works harder sitting further back. It pulls them through.
Next fair I'm going to rotate what's at the front and see what happens. Live and learn, I guess. Did you end up putting the door one further in after that, or did you just accept it was gone?
That's a good way to put it, and I think the second-best-at-the-front idea has real merit. It stopped you, and that's its job.
For what it's worth, I've found the same principle works even with a single wall and no booth to speak of. I never show my strongest botanical study first either. The piece that makes someone stop and ask is never the one I sell, because the one I sell is the one they stay long enough to find. The first piece starts the conversation; the rest of them keep it going.
The jewelry maker likely understood it without ever articulating it. Some people just have an eye for how a space moves, and they never need to name it.