Which Craft Fairs Are Right for Your Jewellery? How to Choose Events Worth Your Time and Money (Podcast Episode)
How do you know which craft fairs and selling events are right for your jewellery business?
In this episode of the Jewellers Academy podcast, Jess is joined by jeweller and Narratorium founder Emma René to explore what makes an event worth your time and money.
They discuss why starting local can be a great way to build confidence and what to look for before you apply. You’ll also hear why the right audience, price point and mix of makers can make such a difference to your experience.
Plus, Jess and Emma share ideas for finding less obvious selling opportunities and some of the UK jewellery and craft fairs to have on your radar.
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Selling your jewellery at a craft fair, market, pop-up or jewellery event can be one of the best ways to grow your jewellery business.
You get to meet customers face-to-face, see which pieces they are drawn to, practise talking about your work, learn more about your ideal customer and, of course, make sales.
But not every event is going to be right for every jeweller.
There are tiny local craft fairs where you might pay £25 for a table, prestigious jewellery fairs that are highly competitive to get into, large Christmas events requiring a significant investment, art fairs, festivals, trade shows and all sorts of niche events in between.
So how do you know which craft fairs and selling events are worth applying for?
In this episode of the Jewellers Academy Podcast, Jess talks to jeweller Emma René, founder of Narratorium, about her experience of selling jewellery at events over the past ten years.
Emma has tried everything from large trade shows and established craft fairs to local events, collaborative pop-ups and more unusual niche events. Together, Emma and Jess explore how to find the right opportunities for your jewellery business, what to research before you apply and why the success of an event should not always be measured by the amount of money you take on the day.
Do listen to the full episode for all the details, but here is some of their advice:
Start with local craft fairs
If you are preparing for your first craft fair, Emma recommends starting locally.
It can be tempting to look at prestigious jewellery fairs or large national events and feel that you need to get there as quickly as possible. Emma actually started her own events journey by jumping straight into a large trade show. Although the experience did lead to opportunities, looking back she recognises that it was a huge leap when she was still very new to running her jewellery business. It required a significant investment of both money and time.
A smaller local craft fair gives you the opportunity to learn how events work without quite so much pressure.
There is much more involved in preparing for a jewellery fair than simply turning up with your work. You need to decide how much stock to make, work out how you are going to display your jewellery, transport everything to the venue, set up your stand, take payments and spend the day talking to customers.
Your first few fairs give you a chance to practise all of this.
They also help you build confidence in something that can initially feel surprisingly vulnerable: standing next to a table filled with things you have made and inviting other people to look at them, ask questions and potentially buy them. A smaller local event can therefore be a brilliant low-risk place to experiment.
Visit an event before you apply if you can
One of the best ways to decide whether a craft fair is right for your jewellery is simply to go and visit it.
Look around as a customer rather than immediately applying as a seller.
What kinds of businesses are exhibiting?
What is the quality of the work?
What price points are represented?
How busy is the event?
What kind of customer appears to be attending?
Does the whole event feel professionally organised and carefully curated?
Most importantly, can you imagine your customer being there?
A fair can be extremely successful for one jewellery business and completely wrong for another.
If you sell fine jewellery with pieces costing several hundred or several thousand pounds, for example, a low-cost community craft fair may not attract customers who are ready to make that kind of purchase. That does not make the fair bad; it simply means there may be a mismatch between the audience and your jewellery.
The same applies in the other direction. An event aimed primarily at luxury buyers may not be the right environment for a playful collection of lower-priced jewellery.
Finding successful jewellery selling events is ultimately about finding the places where your work, your price point and your customers come together.
Look carefully at who else will be selling
The curation of an event matters.
As a handmade jeweller, it can be extremely difficult to sell your work at an event where you are positioned next to mass-produced jewellery being sold at a fraction of your price. The customer is being asked to compare two completely different products. That can lead to conversations about why your jewellery is “so expensive” rather than conversations about craftsmanship, design, materials or the story behind the piece.
Emma has found that, as her own jewellery business has developed, the events that suit her have changed too.
Some craft fairs that worked well earlier in her business eventually stopped feeling like the right environment as her work and price points evolved. She increasingly found that art fairs and other carefully curated events placed her alongside makers producing work of a similar quality.
This is an important reminder that you don't have to keep attending the same fairs forever. Your jewellery business will evolve. Your customer may evolve. Your prices may change. The right events for your business can change too.
Think about the customer, not just the event
Instead of asking only Is this a good craft fair?, ask:
Is this a good craft fair for my customer?
That small shift can open up far more possibilities.
Your best selling event may not actually be a traditional craft fair at all.
Emma talks in the episode about taking part in a local event aimed specifically at Mums. She was the only jeweller there, which gave her an opportunity to reach a very particular audience without competing with dozens of other jewellery brands.
She has also discovered opportunities through other jewellers who sell at festivals and specialist events.
Jess shares examples from the Jewellers Academy community too, including jewellery businesses whose designs connect naturally with gardening, nature or particular hobbies.
If you make colourful statement jewellery, could your customer be at a music festival?
If your jewellery is inspired by tattoos or alternative culture, could a tattoo convention work?
If you create jewellery for people who love a particular sport or hobby, is there an event built around that community?
If your work is strongly inspired by nature, could gardens, heritage venues or outdoor events offer interesting opportunities?
Finding the right place to sell handmade jewellery sometimes means looking beyond the obvious jewellery and craft fairs and asking a much more useful question:
Where are the people who would love what I make already spending their time?
Talk to other makers
Other stallholders can be one of your best sources of information about craft fairs.
When you spend a day or a weekend exhibiting next to other small business owners, conversation naturally turns to the other events everyone has tried.
Which ones were busy?
Which events were well organised?
Where did people make good sales?
Which ones would they avoid next year?
Emma has discovered new events and opportunities simply by talking to the people around her. Those conversations can also lead to collaborations.
Emma has been part of an artists' collective and has worked with other makers to create pop-up galleries and retail events of their own. Sharing the work, marketing and costs between several businesses can make creating your own selling event much more achievable.
Events are therefore not only an opportunity to find customers. They can also be an important part of building your creative business network.
Remember that an event isn't only about the sales you make that day
This may be one of the most important lessons from the episode. Craft fairs can be unpredictable. You can have an incredible weekend at an event one year and return the next year to a completely different result. The weather might be terrible. Another major event might be happening nearby. Footfall might be lower. The organiser's marketing might not have worked as well. The mix of exhibitors may have changed. Sometimes there is no obvious explanation at all.
That can be incredibly disheartening when you have spent weeks making jewellery, paid for the event, created your display, travelled to the venue and stood behind your stall all day.
Emma's approach is to look at the wider value of the event.
Perhaps you made fewer sales than you hoped, but you talked to dozens of potential customers. People took your business cards. Someone discovered your brand and followed you on Instagram. You had conversations about which pieces people loved. You noticed that customers repeatedly picked up one particular design. Someone may come back and buy from you six months later. You may never even know that their first encounter with your jewellery happened at that craft fair.
Events are both a sales activity and a marketing activity.
That longer-term perspective makes it much easier to evaluate whether an event has actually been worthwhile.
Give customers something to connect with
Selling jewellery in person is also an opportunity to tell the story behind your work.
Emma's jewellery brand, Narratorium, is strongly inspired by stories, symbols and experiences, so talking about the meaning behind each collection is naturally part of the way she sells. She has seen those stories directly lead to sales. A customer may initially stop because a necklace or ring is beautiful. But when they discover the inspiration or meaning behind the piece, suddenly there is a deeper emotional connection.
Your jewellery doesn't need to have an elaborate story behind every design for this to work. You can talk about what inspired a collection, the gemstone you have chosen, the technique you used, how you made the piece or simply what you particularly love about it. People buying handmade jewellery often want more than the physical object. Part of the value is knowing who made it and understanding something about the process or inspiration behind it.
A craft fair gives you an opportunity to provide that connection in a way that is much harder to reproduce online.
Choose jewellery for the particular event
You don't necessarily have to take exactly the same collection to every selling event. Think about what people are likely to be shopping for.
Christmas markets are an obvious example.
Someone may love one of your £500 pieces but need more time to think about such a significant purchase. If you also have beautifully made jewellery under £100, they may be able to make a much quicker decision when looking for a Christmas gift.
Emma deliberately creates more giftable pieces around Christmas alongside her main collections for exactly this reason.
This doesn't mean dramatically lowering your prices or making jewellery that doesn't fit your brand; it simply means thinking about the buying situation.
What is your customer likely to be looking for at this particular event, and can you make it easy for them to buy from you?
Should you try an event again if the first one isn't successful?
Yes, sometimes. Jess talks in the episode about viewing some larger jewellery and craft fairs as a longer-term strategy rather than expecting an immediate return. Customers often need to encounter a brand several times before they buy.
The first year they may discover you.
The second year they recognise you.
By the third year, you feel established and familiar.
That doesn't mean you should automatically book every unsuccessful fair three years in a row. There may be clear evidence that an event simply isn't right for your jewellery. But if the audience appears right, other exhibitors are making sales, people are interested in your work and the event feels aligned with your brand, it can be worth thinking beyond the result of one weekend.
Building a jewellery business is rarely about one isolated transaction. It is about developing recognition, trust and relationships over time.
UK jewellery fairs and craft events to explore
During the episode, Jess and Emma discuss a wide range of jewellery and craft events around the UK, from specialist jewellery fairs to larger contemporary craft shows.
We have compiled a directory of events which you can find here:
Make your application stand out
Once you find an event that feels right, don't leave the application until the last minute. Good events can receive many applications, and jewellery can be a particularly competitive category.
Emma recommends applying early and taking the application itself seriously.
Use strong photographs of your jewellery.
Make sure your brand and collection are clearly presented.
Spend time writing your maker biography.
Think about how you communicate what makes your jewellery distinctive.
An application is essentially your opportunity to show an organiser why your business belongs within the event they are creating.
And if the jewellery spaces are already full? Ask to be added to the mailing list or contacted about the next event. One rejection does not mean the opportunity has disappeared forever.
Your first craft fair is part of becoming a jeweller in business
Perhaps the most encouraging message from Emma is that doing events helps you grow regardless of what you sell.
Preparing a collection, displaying it professionally, explaining your work and hearing what customers think gives you information that is difficult to get anywhere else.
You begin to notice what people pick up.
Which designs start conversations.
Which prices people hesitate over.
Which stories resonate.
What customers ask for.
What they come back to look at for a second time.
That feedback can help shape your collections, your marketing and your understanding of your customer.
So if you're considering applying for your first craft fair — or wondering whether it is time to try a different type of selling event — don't judge the opportunity only by what you might take at the till.
Choose an event that fits your work. Go prepared. Talk to people. Pay attention to what you learn.
Every event gives you another opportunity to understand your jewellery business, your customer and where your work belongs.
about emma
Emma René is the founder of Narratorium, a handmade jewellery brand inspired by stories, symbols and the places and experiences she encounters. She has been running her jewellery business for around ten years and has extensive experience selling her work through craft fairs, trade shows, pop-ups, art fairs and other events.
Alongside Narratorium, Emma works part-time as Digital Marketing Coordinator for Jewellers Academy. An award-winning Art Director with a background in advertising, graphic design, branding and marketing, she brings this experience to both the creative and commercial sides of running her jewellery business.
Emma’s website www.narratorium.co.uk
Instagram @narratorium