We completed our 1st craft show two weekends ago. It took until not to reorganize my house and get everything, well almost everything, back in place. We think we did well. We were told by other people showing that the traffic was REALLY slow and we actually did bad. I guess it's all about your perspective. Traffic was slow, but that was probably perfect for our 1st show.
We read a lot of Etsy forum posts about what to bring and what to expect. These were all very helpful. We got tips about what to bring. Here is everything I can remember - product, lots of product, scissors, tape, bags, pens, paper, markers, snacks, water, receipt books, laptop to take credit cards for ProPay, change, business cards, samples to give away, candy, price lists, credit card sign, calculator, and Advil.
Before the show we spent weeks making product for the show. If we learned anything from this, it's that you will never have 100% of what you wanted to bring. When we asked people for advise on what to bring, everyone told us "Everything".
We planned out how we wanted to display the products well in advance. Dad was kind enough to make us displays for the product. Thanks Dad! We recommend using different heights where possible. It create visual interest. Don't forget to do a test run of your layout to make sure everything will fit. This was our 1st craft show, but I've done dozens of trade shows for my "day job" and the only thing you can count on is that if you don't test it out, it won't work when you get there.
Here are some pictures of our setup.
We were lucky to have a beautiful poinsettia background in our location. Unfortunately, the garden center came and "rescued" the poinsettias shortly after we took our pictures.
We put all our sets together on one display.
We put our non-set scents on the other display.
We spent a lot of time planning the setup and products. We even thought to have a format for the invoice number on the sales receipts. But when our 1st sale came we were running into each other trying to do the credit card, looking for bags, writing up the receipt, looking for products, etc.
If there is anything we would do different, it would be with the stuff "behind the curtain". Think of the show as the Wizard of Oz. In front of the curtain, everything looked great. Behind the curtain (or the tablecloth to be specific) it was chaos.
We consolidated our soaps into a big organized tub which quickly became a big disorganized tub which we had to go under the table to dig through for scents as we sold them off the table. Some of the scents that had multiple products were in their own tubs stacked up under the table. Getting replacement products out again required under the table digging. Our advice, and plan for the next show, use drawers. A couple closetmaid type tubs with drawers would have made finding product much easier.
The other big thing we learned was to have a plan for how making sales actually works. Things like who runs the credit cards, where is the change, and store the bags in an easily accessible central location.
We had a great time at the show and met some fellow Etsians. Thanks to everyone there and in the forums for their tips and advice. We have a small tea and shop event this weekend (more on that in the next post) and we are really looking forward to it.
