I'm a Square

I recently had a booth up at Art on the Ave in Tacoma, WA with my friends,  Laurel Henn and Niki Bilodeau. It was a lot of fun. Laurel had her own booth peddling her hand painted and awesome upcycled vinyl record clocks. Niki brought her detailed hand etched glassware to our shared booth.I wish I had taken some pictures but fortunately I was too busy selling my pendants. I'm going to try to rustle up a couple from Laurel so stay tuned, in the meantime I have nothing to show you!

I always leave these art shows with a list of things to do to make the next better and, more often than not, I always neglect to do any of my to-dos! My list this time has a lot of holdover from the last. I desperately need; to take some photos of my set up, make a banner to better announce who I am and what I've got, a way to put my table up front and center and still create a welcoming space, and some weights for my flimsy tent.

One thing I didn't think I needed was a credit card reader. I am small potatoes and people know to bring cash to a craft fair right? Apparently I am actually wrong. There is a huge surge in small credit card readers in the crafty scene. It started out with paypal from your website, Etsy or Artfire but now there is a precedent to expect the small crafter to accept credit cards from their booth in the middle of the street too.

This is all thanks to smart phone credit card readers like Square, Intuit GoPayment, and IMerchant.

LaurelsArt (Laurel Henn) is ahead of me in the race to be current in all things crafty and has had her reader for a few months now. She has tried a couple and settled into using her "Square". I was tempted to get one after my last craft fair "Craft X NW"s (now Make Olympia) Spring ArtsWalk street market but thought it was a little over kill for my small time operation. I was a little resistant to get with the digital times, instead clinging to the idea of the oldtime cash only craft show.  Honestly I was also resistant to pay up to the big c.c. companies.

But the oldtime "Cash and Checks" days seem to be over with the movement toward smartphone credit card readers, enough vendors have given into the system that patrons are expecting to swipe their plastic and go home with some local craft goodies. I couldn't count the number of credit card requests I got at Art on the Ave or the number of sales I lost by not being able to swipe a card on my Iphone.

I chose the Square because there is no monthly fee, and only a transparent percentage taken from every sale, not unlike Paypal fees via Etsy. They keep track of your cash sales too, which is a helpful book keeping tool. This feature will be especially helpful because my tax is included in my pricing,  it helps make giving change easy but book keeping is not my strong point, so an easy way to track sales is going to be a life saver.  I also chose it because Laurel had paved the way and seemed to have minimal problems with it.

I haven't used the Square at a craftshow yet but have charged myself a dollar to test it out. It was easy to use, and I was even able to email myself a receipt. I am here reluctantly but I think I'll like this new credit card accepting world. I'll let you know after my next craftshow if the Square is where it's at.

P.S. Another exciting digital update; my own QR code! Go ahead and scan it with your smartphone, you know you want to! I am thinking I will stick them to my business cards, and maybe do some gorilla marketing and just leave some unlabelled mystery codes around town. I'm excited!