Online Business Resources

5 Tips for Holiday Craft Shows

Attending craft show can be a profitable experience if you use the following tips:

1. Show off your best products

Have an eye catching product? Don’t leave it at home! They may not sell, but they’ll bring more to your table. Make sure what you are showing off is an item you sell, and not just a prop.

2. Keep your table simple

Flashy lights, decorations, and tons of shelves are not needed. Keep your focus on your products.

3. Talk to your customers

While walking around we noticed not a lot of vendors were talking with their customer and encouraging them to buy. You don’t have to be pushy, but ask them what they are looking for. You might have what they want, but they may not see it right away!

4. Have nice brochures

This is something free they can take home to look at later, so you want to make sure it outlines your business and products well. If your company brochures are expensive, design simple ones at home to print and take to your show. Keep the company brochures to include with orders.

5. Smile!

More than just interacting with your customers, be friendly as well. A smile can go a long way!

Craft show may take time to get use to and profit from, but once you do they can be your best friend. As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect”, but with these tips you will have a good jump start!

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Kara Kelso and Anita DeFrank, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive to help women succeed in direct sales. With their kit Make More Sales with Offline Events you’ll learn how to increase your sales at your next event and stay organized too.

Need help starting your ohio home-based business?
Contact Stephanie at: buckeyeva (at) gmail (dot)com
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Taking the Right Products

(You can read day 1 Tip #1: Planning for Outdoor Events and day 2  Tip#2: Can your Direct Sales Products Stand the Heat?)

At offline events in local areas, you have the opportunity to show off your best products in front of huge crowds. However, don’t pass up this opportunity by bringing the wrong type of products.

Since this is your local area, you should already have an idea of what type of people you are going to meet the day of your event. Also, knowing ahead of time what type of event it is can help you to better plan what to bring and how your table is set up.

Let me give you some examples to better understand this concept.

Example #1 – Colors

Take into account the area. Are they supportive of high school sports? If so, this would be a perfect time to pull out items which focus on the school.

Let’s say the school colors are blue and white. If you sell candles, group together blue and white candles on your display. Selling scrapbooking supplies? Design a layout for the school with their colors and maybe mascot. Offer pictures or cards? Pull out the pictures of their mascots.

Even subconsciously, the colors of the school can stand out to potential buyers. If you have ever spent time in a small town, you know how big of a deal a high school football game or other sporting event is. Don’t forget the local colleges either!

Colors also work for organizations such as Red Hat Society and others that use certain specific colors to tell them apart. Red and Purple items grouped together for an event where the Red Hat Ladies are roaming around will definitely catch their eye.

Example #2 – Specific Items

Be sure you know what’s going on along side of the craft show. If there is a horse show going on, bring along anything with horses. Dog show in town? Bringing the pictures and items dog specific are a must. Is it a specific celebration? Display items that are specific to that event.

Sometimes you need to dig deep to come up with ideas which are specific to the event or area. If you find a connection, by all means use it Don’t forget to take into account the upcoming holidays, since many go to events looking for gifts.

Most importantly, do the research on the area before you attend the event if it’s not a town you are familiar with. Learn about the town and the community, as well as the towns close by.

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Kara Kelso and Anita DeFrank, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive to help women succeed in direct sales. With their kit Make More Sales with Offline Events you’ll learn how to increase your sales at your next event and stay organized too. ?

Need help starting your ohio home-based business?
Contact Stephanie at: buckeyeva (at) gmail (dot)com
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Today is Tip #2: Taking Products Outside

You can read yesterday’s post titled: Planning for Outdoor Events

An outdoor event can be extremely profitable, but if you take the wrong type of products you might end up losing quite a bit of your stock.

While most products will be fine, there are many types of items which absolutely can not sit out in the sun or heat. Here are some ideas you can use to protect your products:

1. Use a canopy or tent
If you have color items, a tent or canopy can provide the shade you need to keep them from fading. Believer or not, as long as candles are kept in the shade they are not damaged sitting outside all day.

Keep in mind though, as the sun moves you still may have a chance of products being damaged by sunlight. Pictures, color paper, candles with color, and other items may be exposed. The shade SHOULD be enough, but you never know.

2. Use coolers and ice
Other types of products can possibly keep cool by sitting in a cooler of ice. However, this may not always work. If you are at an all day event, ice will melt.

Also, having the item too cold might damage it as well. Items like lotion and body butter probably wouldn’t do very well getting too hot or too cold. Items that need to be kept at room temperature probably should be kept at home.

3. Test at home
If you aren’t sure if the products will be damaged or not, do a test at home. Take just one item you feel you can part with, and set it outside in the shade or in a cooler of ice. See what happens after it sits out for several hours. It’s possible it may become damaged, so be sure it’s not a high dollar item or something you planned to sell.

4. Take orders
If all else fails, set yourself up to take orders instead of directly selling items. This even works at indoor events, but must be set up the right way.

If you have a few items which you know won’t be damaged by the sun, bring them along for display. Give yourself plenty of room on the table to take orders, and bring along as much information as possible since you won’t have some of the actual products out. You must be able to show pictures and give even the smallest of details. Make it so the customer can visualize the item as if it was right in front of them.

There are occasions where outdoor events just aren’t possible, but this is rare. Almost all products can be sold outside with a little creativity and thinking outside the box.

Good luck at your next outdoor event!

—————–
Anita DeFrank and Kara Kelso, owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com strive to help women succeed in direct sales. With their kit Make More Sales with Offline Events you’ll learn how to increase your sales at your next event and stay organized too.

Need help starting your ohio home-based business?
Contact Stephanie at: buckeyeva (at) gmail (dot)com
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In the summer, most events you find in your local area are usually outside. If yours is a product you know can go out, you’ll need to plan ahead, and plan well.

Use the following as a checklist for your next outdoor event.

- Bring a tent or canopy
An absolute must for keeping your products out of the sun so they won’t fade or be damaged by extreme heat. You’ll also keep yourself more comfortable staying out of the sun.

- Bring weights for tent
A very minor detail, but if it’s even slightly windy you could have problems. You don’t have to invest a whole lot into your tent, especially if you can use weights with it. The easier it is to put up and take down, the better. Using weights gives your cheap tent added sturdiness.

- Wear light clothing
If its summer, it’s going to be hot. Be sure to wear light colored clothes and something that will keep you cool. Nice tank tops, short sleeves, etc are fine just as long as they look nice.

- Wear sun screen
Even if your products are in the shade, you might not be. At our last event, my main concern was keeping the candles out of the sun and adjusting our table as need be as the sun moved. Unfortunately, I paid no attention to my back faced to the sun and was burnt pretty badly. Remember to take care of yourself as well as your products!

- Bring water
You’ll want to make sure you have plenty of water or other liquids to keep yourself hydrated. Being in the heat for too long can easily dehydrate your body without you even noticing.

In addition to making sure you have the supplies above, you’ll also need to be ready for any type of weather. It could be hot and sunny, or it could be cool and raining. If it’s just sprinkling, the event could be going as normal. With a sturdy tent you should be alright, but make sure it will hold up in just about any condition that wouldn’t cancel an event.

You should also plan to pack up quickly should the weather turn from bad to worse. Check your local weather the day of the event so you’ll have an idea of what to expect. If storms are a possibility, have your boxes under the table and only pull out items which can be put away quickly. You don’t want to miss the event completely, but you also don’t want to put all your stock at risk.

While none of us can fully predict what the weather will be, we can at least plan for the worst and hope for the best. Outdoor events can be a pain sometimes and even a loss, but when the conditions are right they can be extremely profitable!

—————–
Kara Kelso and Anita DeFrank are owners of DirectSalesHelpers.com who strive to help women succeed in direct sales. With their kit Make More Sales with Offline Events you’ll learn how to increase your sales at your next event and stay organized too.

Need help starting your ohio home-based business?
Contact Stephanie at: buckeyeva (at) gmail (dot)com
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