I had a wonderfully awesome time at my first show this past weekend, the New England Craft Festival at The New England Folk Festival. It was my first show and I have to say it’s gotten me excited to jump into some more! I loved being able to meet my customers face-to-face, and I have to say it confirmed what I was already suspicious of- that my customers are some of the loveliest, coolest people around!
My mom helped me SO MUCH. I honestly do not know what I would have done without her. Ok, she did give me one minor heart attack. After she arrived (late) to my apartment she helped me pack everything in to the mini-van, which was mostly my inventory. I had already brought over everything like my tent, table clothes, and booth stuff to her house before. So we packed up the car and were heading down the highway, and right before the highway split I jokingly said to her “You remembered to bring the tent, right?” WRONG! So we were able to jump off the highway before the split, get stuck in traffic, go to my mom’s hurl the tent into the trunk and speed off to the show. We were half an hour late and missed the time we were supposed to volunteer to set up. But we set up with time to spare, so it all worked out alright in the end. And mom felt majorly terrible and I was allowed to rib her for a while :)
Anyway, here are some of m experiences that I will remember for next time and may help anyone else planning a show. As always if you have any suggestions/comments, please share!
-Candy: I put out a container of tootsie rolls for people to take. Many people who came in my booth had a few, and many people walking by would grab one without coming in. That’s fine, that’s what they are there for. But lady with the shifty eyes would sidled up to the dish, grabbed an enormous fistful and power walked away…I’m on to you
-Extra everything, just in case: I was pretty good about bringing extras (extra price tags, bags, inventory, etc.), but there were a few things I got lazy about and wish I had brought. So when in doubt, might as well pack it!
-Mailing list sign-up: I optimistically put out a mailing list sign-up, but after the first day took it down. It took up space, no one seemed to be noticing it, and whenever I made a sale I was too flustered to ask if they wanted to sign-up. I figure you can sign up for it through my blog, website, and facebook (all of which are on my business cards), so if people are interested they will be able to find it. I’d be curious to hear if anyone has a good strategy/experience with having a mailing list sign-up!
-Rubbish Basket: This was easily one of the best things I brought. It made it easy to toss snack wrappers without having to leave the booth, and when people had candy they had to walk to the back of my booth to throw out their wrappers.
Next time I will:
-Remember to stick business cards in people’s bags with their purchases!
-Bring more things to work on: Since it’s sort of hard to do decoupage in a tent and I wanted to have something to keep my hands busy, I brought some of my sheet music stack to cut. I figured it would be nice for people to see at least one step in my process, and it would give me something to do. It totally worked, but next time I need to bring a whole lot more since I cut everything really fast!
-Have more professional signage: I printed out my own little sign saying that I accepted credit cards. I don’t think anyone saw it/read it. I got home and promptly ordered (they are free of charge!) professional decals from Visa/Mastercard to display next time. Nothing instills confidence like seeing the actual logos.
-Bring more snacks!: You can never have enough snacks, enough said.
-More vertical display space: My booth was a little improvised, and I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be exactly what I needed. While my tables (I think) looked pretty good, and I had some wares hanging around the edges of the tent, I also had a lot of unutilized blank space on my walls. I’m going to work on some pegboard stands that can go around the walls from which I can my plaques for next time.
My makeshift sign...did the trick but will probably invest in something a little more colorful and professional eventually. I made it in Illustrator and was pretty proud.
I'm not loving this picture of me, but this is how I rearranged my tent on the second day, it made a huge difference to have the inventory closer in and was more inviting. People didn't seem to feel comfortable walking straight in to the back of the booth, and this way they could see more and be drawn in.
Since I'm not able to leave comments...Yep! I bought a bunch of shower curtains from Ocean State Job Lot and clipped them to the tent frame with curtain rings.
