Southwest Arts Festival 2012 Review

January 27-29, we attended the Southwest Arts Festival in Indio, CA.  This was the first BIG show for us that required any amount of travel.  The festival was located at the Empire Polo Club on Monroe St.  It is a beautiful venue with great expanses of green grass and large palm trees.  Being an outside show in the desert, wind is always a concern.  And true to form, Mother Nature played with us a bit on Friday with gusts up to 15 mph.  Sat and Sun were much milder with slight breezes that kept everyone nice and cool.  The high temp for all 3 days was a pleasant 79*. We were located in row 9, all the way in the back by the food court.  This location gave us a nice crowd around lunch time, but we found that customers were more interested in getting to the burgers than looking at baskets.  An additional downfall to our location was that it took about 1 hour from entering the festival until patrons arrived in our area. By that time, they were tired and had already spent their money.  Next year, we will definitely ask for a booth in the first 3 rows.  Even with the wind and the less than stellar location, we did make some sales.  Not as much as we would have liked, but those that we did were to very appreciative basket collectors.  

All in all, it was a very nice weekend.  We had several friends come visit us at the festival and we met some new friends, both human and feathered. We will definitely try this show again next year.