Every year for the past 16 years I have participated in the annual Buyers Market of American Craft in Philadelphia, PA. The Buyers Market of American Craft is the nation’s largest wholesale craft trade show. The Buyers Market offers artists the opportunity to create long-term business relationships with more than 3,000 galleries throughout the United States and Canada. This show is one of my main marketing tools every year.

Last year I blogged our daily progress getting to the show, but this year I was too tired at the end of the day. So here I’ve summed it up now that we are back in Santa Fe and I’m recovered!

The first thing we do is make all the glass art and ship it. Hargrove exhibitor services handles all the shipping. We put all the glass art into barrels and boxes, then strap it down to pallets. Hargrove sends a truck to my shop to pick-up the pallets, and then the pallets are delivered directly to my booth. This way I don’t have to worry about boxes getting lost or damaged. The other advantage is that my pallets are the first to arrive in my booth before all the other types of shipments. We shipped the work about two weeks before the show on February 3rd. I’d like to thank Jannine, Marcy, Cia and John for all their help in getting everything ready for the show!

Jannine and I left for Philadelphia on the 15th. Thursday the 16th is our first day to set-up. We are always a little anxious to see if everything arrives safely!

Day 1 set-up took us to around 6pm. We always get the booth all set-up so all we have to do the next day is put out the glass and adjust the lights.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art always has a great show when we are there. This year is Vincent van Gogh, we’ve also seen Dali, Degas, and Modern Art.

After we left the Franklin Institute Jannine and I had a wonderful meal at a Spanish tapas restaurant called Tinto. The food in Philadelphia is amazing. It’s definitely one of the highlights in coming here!

The show opened on Saturday morning and closed on Monday. My daughter Flynn came for the weekend with Ronnie to help us out.

The show was successful! We took orders through July, and picked-up some new accounts. That’s what it’s all about! The final step is breaking down the booth. My wonderful brother Mark comes up from Maryland to help us take down the booth. It’s a hard job, but he makes it go fast! We were done in 4 hours- a show record for us!

On Tuesday morning we flew home to green chili and fresh mountain air! It sure is great living in New Mexico! Now it’s time to start filling those orders!