We do Craft Shows as well, and get most of the same remarks. The one we seem to get the most is:
“That is (so cute, just darling, too neat, etc)”, spoken while putting it back down and leaving. They take photos of our items at shows too, and as a matter of fact, they even do the photo thing inside of our shop sometimes!
It can get annoying, but we kind of expect it, especially at the shows, and even in our shop. We sell the supplies to DIY crafters, and we expect them to frequent our booth and our shop for ideas, so why wouldn’t they be there to gather ideas? While the patterns for our items are all created by us, we can’t claim the original idea for all of our creations. So, we expect others to be inspired and create similar items themselves. We don’t sell copies of our patterns. They have to come up with their own.
As far as the complaint about the price being too high is concerned, the best response that I’ve heard was at a yard sale, of all places, but I think it could apply at a Craft Show. The middle-aged vendor had all of his items marked clearly, but a shopper asked what his price was on a two dollar item anyway. Once the written price was confirmed, the shopper declared that the price was too high, and continued browsing, only to come back to the first item again and ask the price again. The vendor replied with the price, but this time it was a dollar more than the last time. When the shopper pointed out that the marked price was a dollar less, the vendor responded that the item had gotten mis-marked, and it should actually be marked (this time the vendor raised the price two dollars higher). The shopper began to say something, but the vendor interrupted the shopper with the statement “It’ll go up another dollar every time you ask me that question, so you decide how much you want to pay for it!” The shopper left in disgust. Haggling the price down didn’t seem to work at all that time.
CD in Oklahoma