Selling Saturdays: Selling Crafts From a Basket

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In November of last year my husband mentioned that his co-workers wanted to purchase some of my knitted and locker hooked items as Christmas gifts.

I racked my head for a while trying to figure out the most convenient way to get my handmade products to them.

I came up with an idea for a portable craft sale of sorts. I grabbed a basket that had a long handle, a large flat base and short sides. I lined the bottom of it with a piece of material.

I then bundled up my various handmade items into gift type sets, tied them with ribbon and placed price tags on everything. I placed an envelope in the basket for people to place their money.

My husband took it to work with him and left it in his staff room for 2 days. At the end of the two days he came home with just 2 things left in the basket, however the envelope was around $30 short.

Knowing the environment my husband works in pretty well, I figured that someone must have grabbed the items and then had to rush out to deal with a patient before they had a moment to place the money in the envelope and then got so busy they forgot about the money.

Sure enough all it took was a note on the staff room table asking politely “did someone perhaps forget to place their money inside the envelope” and within a week or so my husband received the rest of the money for my items.

One thought a friend gave me to improve on keeping track of what was bought by who was to include a clipboard where the customers write down what they bought and how they paid.

Will I do the “Craft Sale In A Basket” again this year?

Yes I will and here is why:

It did not require much of my time.

It took me around 1 hour to bundle and tag all my crafts, and then my job was done. If I had done a open house for my husbands co-workers I would have had to invest 4 to 8 hours of my time during the open house and several hours more getting my home prepared for it.