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Contact: Linda Cox, 956-7602	Air Date: April 15, 1998

Marketing Hawaii's arts and crafts industry pt.1 Hawaii's arts and craft fair industry has exploded since the early 70s to a peak of about 325 in 1992. Today there are about 250 craft fairs throughout the state and a University of Hawaii researcher set out to understand the phenonmenon behind craft fairs. Linda Cox, a professor in economics at UH conducted two surveys in 1994 to get a better understanding of marketing in the industry. The first was to find out more about who is making the crafts and how they are selling their products. The survey of those who made arts and crafts-indicate that the average age was 44 years old with a little more than 80 percent being female. The producers were in business for about eight years and it was sole income for about 20 percent of the respondents. The gross sales averaged just under 13-thousand dollars and while they used various channels to market their goods, a little more than 40 percent of the income came through craft fairs. I'll tell you about the people who attend craft fairs on tomorrow's University Report, I'm Tracy Orillo Donovan.

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