No.
You don't need a CRM. You need a booth-day system and a way to keep buyers coming back.
What's really going on
You're a maker at shows taking payment and remitting tax. That's a retail cash-and-carry business, not a sales pipeline. Every person who walks up, pays, and walks off is a customer you'll never see again unless you capture something. Right now your leak isn't tracking — it's the fact that a hundred people liked your stuff yesterday and you can't reach one of them today.
What to do instead
- Square (check current pricing) — you're likely already on it for card payments. Turn on the customer directory and the email receipt option. Every sale now has a name and email attached, free.
- A Google Sheet — one row per show: date, city, gross, top 3 SKUs, three things you noticed. That IS your CRM for the next year.
- A sign at the booth — "Text JOIN to [number] for 10% off custom orders." Custom UV and laser work is where your margin is, and that's where a repeat buyer is worth 20 walk-ups.
Do this today: open Square Dashboard → Customers → turn on "collect email at checkout." Fifteen minutes.
What you're being oversold
Nobody yet, but the moment you tell someone you "do shows and take payments" a rep will pitch you Pipedrive or HubSpot. Skip both. Pipedrive is for tracking deals that take weeks — yours take 90 seconds. HubSpot Free is fine but you have nothing to put in it. Doing nothing costs you the custom-order pipeline: the person who saw your laser work in Denver and would've paid three times booth price for a wedding gift, if only they could find you again.
When to revisit this
When you're getting more than ~15 custom-order inquiries a month between shows and losing track of who wanted what.
The part worth getting right
Decide what you actually sell. If it's mostly cash-and-carry trinkets at shows, you need a mailing list and better booth signage, full stop. If custom work (engraved gifts, branded runs, 3D commissions) is where the real money hides, you need a way to catch a lead at the booth, quote them Tuesday, and deliver in two weeks — a different animal entirely, closer to HoneyBook territory than a spreadsheet. Same business on the surface, two very different next moves. Which one are you actually building?