TRADE SHOWS PART 6—THINKING ABOUT YOUR BOOTH

Our booth for buyer shows is entirely different than what I normally look like at my weekly street market outings. I will post pics of both booths later on, when I actually have a picture of the “corporate” booth (we did not take one yet), and I will provide costs for all materials as well as sources for those materials, as well as why we chose what we did. Suffice it to say that for now, you want to consider some of the following when thinking about booth design:

1. The clutter factor. Make sure that people are not overwhelmed by the stuff in your booth and that they can move freely and quickly around it. Buyers know what they are looking for and it does not take them long to cruise the wares. Make sure that they can cruise yours quickly and efficiently—it leaves a good impression.

2. The color factor. Our mentor told us to add color color color! You don’t have to go overboard, but tasteful use of much color catches the eye of passersby quite well. If you are in the middle of an aisle, as we are the more eye catching you can do, the better. We made up royal blue sidewalls for our booth, which makes our signage and products pop!

3. The labor factor. Can you and at most one other person set up and break down your booth? The labor fees the show coordinators charge for booth setup and breakdown are outrageous! I would think of a booth design that can be transported in a canopied pickup or a rented van and that can be set up with you and at most one other cheap helper. We accomplish structure very cheaply and efficiently, and I will be putting this info in the blog with the booth pics. We also use lots of fabric and “soft” items that roll and fold and fit compactly into boxes.

4. The cost factor. You can put together a very successful booth for less than $1,000. We routinely get offers to rent booth setups for $2000 and up per show. We can’t even consider that kind of money right now, nor would we ever. Our booth is designed specifically to show off our products. No rental booth can do that for us.

TRADE SHOWS PART 5

As I mentioned earlier, we are participating in several buyer shows this year, all of them in different markets—gift, home & housewares, hardware/housewares, and pets.

Our first ever buyer show, the Seattle Gift Show, ended on February 5. All in all, it was a good experience for us, although not in instant sales. Be forewarned: our industry mentors have informed us that the buyer shows are not for orders, but for contacts. So, go into them with the mindset of making as many contacts of various kinds as you can, rather than racking up as many orders as you can.

But, you say, these shows cost lots of money! If I don’t get a monetary return, what good is doing the show? That is a question everyone will have to answer for themselves. For us, the Seattle Gift Show was rather quiet. Too quiet for my taste, actually, but Mr. Sales and Marketing was satisfied. We gained the following: 1) possibly a new manufacturer who will bring our necessary up-front costs way down and allow us a great deal more flexibility in our overseas manufacturing, 2) exposure exposure exposure; and 3) face time with press people who stopped by and were only too willing to hand over their cards. This will all pay off in the long run, as other earlier efforts seem to be paying off for us this winter.

All of our show expenditures get charged to our advertising expenses, because in reality that’s what they are—a face-to-face advertising/networking opportunity (notice that two out of three mentioned in the previous paragraph are all about advertising). We have found word of mouth and face to face to be our most effective and certainly cheapest forms of advertising in the long run, and this is just one more networking avenue. What is nice about these shows is that you can choose your target audience, so you might think of the cost as the price to pay for accessing your most desirable demographic if your model is about business to business sales.

I will blog more about the specifics of our booth, moving in, moving out, and what we do to bring down the costs of transportation, food and lodging for these shows at the end of March when I have pics to post as visual aids. We can’t do these shows without the help of family and friends, so if you are hesitant to ask for help, now is the time to get over it.

Our next show is the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago March 16-18. This is the global home and housewares event of the year, and so we expect the show to be huge and hectic. Wish us luck! I will bring back all the details, as well as start talking about show specifics.