Retail Therapy, Part 3

I was given a great opportunity last year to sell my knitted baubles through the cafe where I work, no commission, no strings, just put the baubles on the tree, see if they sell and keep the profits. Brilliant!

I bought the wool....

I did the designs....

 

I knitted as though my life depended on it....

When the festive season rolled around I labelled them individually, and hung them on the tree...

And four days later not one of them had been sold but 9 of them had been nicked!

If they'd been on the tree all christmas and hadn't sold I'd have been a little disappointed, but no harm done. For so many of them to have been taken and in such a short time, that just made me sad. I probably served those people drinks!

I took the rest of them off the tree after that. And it made me wonder, if as a crafts person you take your work to a craft fair or market and you are the victim of 'stall-lifting', is there a way of recouping your losses? Is there an insurance you can put in place to deal with these events? Perhaps this is the kind of thing I should have already looked into but, to be honest, I never expected that it would happen to me. Naive? Perhaps.

Has anyone else had an experience like this? I hope not, and I hope you never do, because it feels horrible, and there's nothing you can do about it. Unless you fit all your handmade goods with tracking devices, or tiny explosives that you can detonate remotely when you know they've been stolen. But that's a little extreme.

Oh well, at least someone, somewhere had a beautifully baubled tree, even if they didn't pay for it.