Secrets of Selling at Craft Fairs: How to Get In, Make Sales, and Grow Your Business

Lesson Info

Evaluate the Show

Okay and then you want to evaluate the show so remember when we talked about like all those finances and stuff we're coming back to that so the girl who hates hates numbers and math and all of that kind of stuff also hates paperwork, huh? So but we're gonna have to do a little bit of paperwork when we learnt how to evaluate that show so the first thing that you want to do is record your experience and does anybody remember a profit and loss sheets that we talked about yesterday so that's actually a bonus material is that profit and loss sheets and you get the blank one and then you get it filled out with three examples and we're gonna look we're gonna look at those now in just a second with those three examples so you want to fill out that profit and loss worksheet you want to do that soon part of what we're including on there are nonmonetary roo eyes returns on our investment so you're going to forget that's that stuff you want to do that pretty soon and then I like to create a show e...

valuation work she that it just like I was telling you quick reference of the show one of the things I like about quickbooks when we're talking about finance things I can look up like I put a crash owen is a customer so I can look up okay patchwork show how much have I made at these shows in the past? Do I want to do this show again? Well, I always do better on holiday there's another show I'm thinking about doing in spring I'm gonna do that show instead of patchwork into patchwork of the holiday and really kind of considering those monetary and non monetary benefits. Yeah, and when you and when you think about it and there are things that you might you might not be thinking about, you know, you need to be thinking about that booth feet and the application fee, you know, it's ten dollars to apply that's that's still part of it, you need to you need to consider that if you're paying for that any kind of license and, you know, sales tax we talked about some of those smaller venue are unusual venue shows that asked for a percentage they asked for twenty percent or they ask, you know, whatever it is that some of those shows were asking for and then your labor, you know, believe it or not, your time applying to that show is part of it. Some shows we're gonna have a harrier application than others you need to consider that, and then your time at the show setting up, taking down all of that stuff is all part of it, and you're display your props everything tent chairs, electric, whatever you need to buy and your travel time and like the necessary your child care people aren't normally thinking about that and then the last one people totally forget about is your products you actually like buying your products from yourself wholesale to resell them so you need to think about that? Um, what are some non monetary benefits that you guys have gotten out of craft shows, friendships, of course, friendship yeah, me too. What else I think follows all the things that I needed to do to be prepared so it's like you have a show and then maybe not, you know, completed some items like creating an instagram account or, you know, getting more business cards because you've run out it's like it all that administrative stuff it all of a sudden, like has to get done so it creates a guess a deadline for you, so get in your business ship shape in time for the show, it puts you to put your butt in gear right? Because you have you have this thing that's highly motivating you actually save motivation and inspiration for the next show? Yeah, for sure motivation and inspiration and anybody else people to collaborate with photographers and models and makeup artist yeah, well, the people experiences just like a great learning, yeah, learning we have a lot of responses in the chat room two little little girls perls says ideas from customers on new items that they would possibly be interested in so that's like back which we've talked about a lot awesome sonya be says getting wholesale accounts and custom made orders for her new jewelry uh barry says experience yeah wholesale and custom some dale you take their creative life and how to write on board I feel like I might need to take that um this is meeting me this is an article that was right about me this was one of the worst shows that I ever did I think I sold like two things but I ended up meeting this girl there you know I was connecting with her and she was a freelance writer and she was like I'm going to write about you and ah photographer came out and like took my picture and he was totally hot and he only had one hand which only made him like hotter to me but um yes so the whole thing was just a super the super great great experience you know and I got this with great picture out of it that I could use I got this awesome press I just moved to a new area so she's an awesome writer right you have you gave her a good material well she came over it felt like four hours interviewing me for this one paragraph so and we ended up becoming friends, so I mean, I what I got out of that show was so I mean, now was so much more worth it than the amount of money I could've made, you know, just just the friendship alone. So these are the kinds of things you want to think about when you're filling out that profit and loss workshop, I like to keep the records of everything, because after this show, I didn't know this was gonna happen after this show, all I had was a new friend, possibly, you know, I basically had a potential new friend I had three or four hours of not being lonely, so but then afterwards, this stuff happens, so when you have those records, you go back in, and you feel that in the sounded really bossy, and I'm like, you go back in and you fell that in. So when you're thinking it, when you're filling out your profit and loss works, you're writing down your income and your non monetary compensation, which we, which we just talked about, and then your monetary compensation so the revenue from your items sold the sales tax you collect. If anybody writes a wholesale order at the show, when somebody plays is a wholesale order later, you go back to your sheet and add that this seems like a whole lot of paperwork in recordkeeping but believe you me you're going to make more money in the long run you're going to save more time because you're going to be applying to the right shows that's it bottom line so when we're talking about networking, we're talking about those fellow vendors, those industry connections like when I met that freelance writer and that audience growth newsletter social media and something that we don't always think about his personal enjoyment you know it's it's really important to me to enjoy myself at the show I will do a show again if I didn't make that much money if it's close to home and the set ups easy and it's only like five or six hours and I have fun and I feel like I'm among the people that I want to be among and it's good in that way so thinking about that and then that those media and press contacts but again these are your priorities maybe your priority is just money and that's it maybe you should I don't know maybe you should go get another job no money money will come and that's what that's what we're talking about here is that preparation and that organization so that you can make the money but I think that it's really important to think about it in a round way you know we're thinking about everything everything about it um okay, so let's let's look at this a little bit um I'm gonna come over here so this is this? This one is filled out okay, so this one is full that I have three different different examples I'm not going to be like too deep into the math situation right now, but so in this example we're looking at these are our costs so we have, you know, booth the application fee marketing and advertising child care apparently this person oh, I thought they didn't eat they didn't have any rentals they spent twenty bucks on food and then their goods cost them a thousand dollars they're only doubling their doubling their things so they're basically selling it yourself wholesale um so they're total expenses were fourteen, ninety five they sold, you know, two thousand dollars in revenue and they collected one hundred seventy five dollars, in sales tax so that income they got was twenty one, seventy five when you subtract those numbers, that profit is six, eighty okay, this person got ten new news that our subscribers and found out about for new shows cool. This seems like this seems great to me right now. Let's look at b so this person spent uh, six hundred dollars on the show that's including their wholesale goods so they spent all this stuff this person had twenty dollars on lunch too okay and then they brought in their revenue was five hundred dollars they collected forty three dollars in sales tax so they're actually negative seventy dollars okay, but when you're thinking about that and this this feels a little bit confusing you have to think about that you sold you sold those good so you were already getting that same prices if you were selling wholesale so it's almost like you sold it to yourself and then, uh you want to look in this section here so met chen yu vendor so make ten new friends fifteen new news that our subscribers met to store owners. Okay, two stores that were interested in your stuff potential wholesale found out about eight new shows one customer wants to do a private show at our house. This last one seems dorky but that could potentially be the biggest moneymaker on here. Yeah. So do you ever try and calculate what those air considered now soft costs but what that could be in terms of de viteri calculate what that could be in revenue taken estimate so so you don't go for the other returns. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's totally up to you. You know, totally up to you I can kind of think in my head like what these things are, what their value with their value is in my business like I mean I'm not I'm not doing shows anymore but I can think about when that was like okay a customer wants to a private show in our house and to me that's five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars and that's a very little effort on my part that's like showing up that's free dinner that's free wine you know what I mean? That's a bunch of new regular customers that's why that that to me is like really boom yeah and then if you did get that private showing would you then add the income into this into the definite you definitely I mean if you want to do do it full force that is what that is what you will d'oh yeah so to me I would rather do this show you know there's like there's so much more potential in the long run um yeah, I think I just pointing that out it shows that even though you know that show wouldn't come is the loss if you place value tio there's other potential leads yeah yeah so so you khun place that kind of projected projected value on there um and then and then see and then you can even go back if that thing actually happens you know, like I would have you said made a friend potential media article you know when I met that girl who wrote about me and then I would have gone back and I said article published you know, I noticed bump in traffic to website by thirty percent of the article came out so uh I'm gonna sneak back over here let's talk about some show evaluation questions so these air you know, this is kind of the culmination of everything we've been talking about you know? This isn't the end this is this is what you're thinking about so you've got that profit and loss worksheet you're looking at you're looking at how you did how you khun b better how you're going to get their improving each experience that you have so you want to think about if you met your financial goals lt's if not what could you do to meet them? So you're thinking about incentives you're thinking about to first that's when you go back to all this other stuff that we've talked about and you think that was connecting with potential wholesale accounts one of your goals if it was did you do it okay and then this level is your community and personal evaluation so if these air if this is an area that's part of your goals when we talked about our benefit our goal in our action if this is an area that's like that you you're asking yourself did you connect with your fellow makers? Did you build that community were how could you have connected more thiss was something you wanted to dio again give yourself a goal I am going to meet for new people today you know I'm goingto say more than two sentences to them or I'm going toe force them to talk about themselves has everybody laughs that and then you want to think about if you enjoyed yourself was there anything I could have done differently? Yeah, I could have not been a cranky pants when this show was slow, right? You know I didn't enjoy myself because the show was too busy and I didn't have a helper you know what am I what am I learning from this then you want to evaluate the show you want to evaluate the producer are they doing what they're supposed to be doing? Is it professional? Is it organizes it well attended do I feel like they had my interest in mind? Did those people have my back? You know when I went up to them and I said, hey, I've got these vendors on either side of me rebecca co write with those with those big walls did they have my back or were they like I was sorry work it out on your own you know it's up to you do you want to produce that has your back? I do you know that's really important to me and you also want to think about that audience growth did you get subscribers? Did you build your social media audience? What could you have done differently to build that I feel like you're going to say nothing because you already know everything that you're supposed to do to do that so I think you could just put what could I have done differently listen to nicole and then that will be do what nicole do wanna cool set andan was their potential media exposure for your brand these are all great benefits and then I put these you know, this is just something I made on my own I put these questions you're going to be personal for you on this sheet and then I look at that and then I add that in one of the things that I didn't do that I kind of want to do for some of these evaluation sheets is change it to like one through ten number system so it's like that I mean my fan shal goals for the show well one being the worst ten being the best I got eight and then add that up and it's like okay shows that are you know, end up getting a score of seventy through eighty are sure applies shows the score of this to this our maybes you know I have to consider it then you want to evaluate yourself did you manage your time? Well, you know how about your booth displaying set up? How was that when you analyze that did you kill it? Did you trip a bit and then thinking about your sales technique, so evaluating those sales techniques that we talked about, you know, is that something you need to work on your really looking at all of this stuff promotion? Did people show up that you invited from your social media? Did any of those people in your audience show up? Did any of your newsletter people show up when you sent out a news and said, I'm going to be if this show anybody on my newsletter that shows up this show, you get a free gift, you know, like here's the secret word to say, when you get there something, did those people show up? If not, how do you make that happen? And then evaluating your products? I talked a little bit about this with inventory, but when you saw something, you know, if you're doing it in an app and the shopify or something like that, you know, you need you record what the thing is, if you're doing on paper, you record what the thing is. One purple dinosaur shirt size small, long sleeve that is very hopeful because that's telling you what, selling at what season? In what area at what show it's telling you when people are buying things on deal, you know? You're somewhere else, and you're selling. That is twenty percent off. If you sold a bunch of those, you've never sold any of those in california, save those up and sell it. Next time you're out there, don't even bring him to the california show. Uh, you you really want to think about. Think about that as you plan for your next shows and as you plan for your seasons.

Class Description

Lessons

1Craft Shows Should be a Part of Your Business
2Introduction: How to Have a Successful Craft Show Experience
3Why You Should Be Doing Craft Shows
4Is Your Business Ready for a Craft Show?
5Now is the Time for Craft Shows
6Get Your Product Ready
7Branding Your Business
8Pricing Your Products
9Smaller Craft Shows & Unusual Venues
10Research Potential Shows
11Apply to a Craft Show
12Your Website & Online Presence
13Writing About Your Business
14Stellar Product Photos
15Preparation: Create a Task Timeline
16Marketing Before the Craft Show
17Recruit Craft Show Assistants
18Preparation: Packing Up Before the Show
195 Tips for Preparing Your Display
1The Importance of Your Booth Display
2Booth Display: Where to Get Inspiration
3Brand Your Booth & Signage
4Utilize Your Booth Space
5Workshopping Booth Displays
6Keep Your Customer in Mind
7Engage with Your Customers
8Sell with Storytelling
9Craft Your Pitch
10Conquer Craft Show Obstacles
11Product Loss Prevention
12How to Handle Difficult Customers
13Strategies for Busy & Slow Shows
14Discounts & At-Show Marketing
15Celebrate After the Show
16Follow Up with Producers
17Connect with Customers
18Build Your Community
19Evaluate the Show
20Plan for the Next Craft Show