summer open house wrap up

As many of you know, among other things, I had spent part of this past month organizing an Etsy Milwaukee summer open house.  We had the open house this past week.  Of course I took pictures of my display the day before and didn't take any pictures of the other displays or anything else that happened during the open house.  You'll have to trust me that all of the other vendors had awesome displays and that we had a great food and drink spread, too.

This is almost the exact same display that I used for my May show except that it's more of an L shape than an open square.  I put my laptop on that blank spot on the left table.  This is the most successful attempt that I've had at getting my banner to hang at the right height.  Ideally, my tables would be 2 inches higher, but that isn't going to happen any time soon.

I couldn't get a great shot of my entire display in this room, but I think that you get the idea.

I love this layout that I have for my jewelry.

I created a bunch of small magnet sets as party favors for our little party last weekend and put them out for this show.  I'll continue to use these as freebies and party favors.  At some point I will put together larger cards that I can package in bags with toppers, too.

I also have to share this photo that one of my friends took of me with my display.  Nope, that adorable baby is not mine, just a neat little guy that I got to meet.

We had eight vendors total, most of whom did a fair amount of advertising on social media, to other friends and family, and at shows.  I'd love to say that we had a great turnout and a lot of sales, but we didn't.  A handful of friends and some customers stopped by throughout the day and did make a few purchases.

Does that mean that this event was a complete failure?  Absolutely not.  Here are a few reasons why:

• It was a lot of fun.  We had a great group of people, many of whom really enjoyed getting to hang out during the day.
• There were a lot of opportunities for networking.  Many of you know that one of the best aspects of any craft show is networking with other artists.  A lot of vendors were really excited about the networking opportunities that they had during the open house.
• The organizational process was a great experience and will ensure that future events run this smoothly.  I got a lot of compliments about all of the work that I put into this event, which was a big ego boost.  Even though we didn't get a lot of customers, we attribute the major lack of customers primarily to the time of year.  It is really hard to get a lot of people to turn out for any event in the middle of summer.  People are busy with friends and family social events and other activities.  A lot of vendors are game to do this again in the fall when we will hopefully attract more of a holiday shopping crowd.  We'll also have more lead time for promotion.

A number of people have told me not-half jokingly that I should leave my display up like this all year round in my house.  While it would be amazing to have a more permanent set up, I'm not going to leave it up right now because:

• In this location, it's the first thing that people see when they walk in our front door.  While this was great as the host of the open house, I think that it sends a weird message to guests.  If I did set it up more permanently, I would put it in the purple bedroom where I house my light box, sewing machine, and supplies.
• In this location, everything gets a lot of sunlight.  While it's amazing to have a lot of sunlight in our front room, I don't want my display items, particularly the fabrics and cards (i.e. earring cards), to fade.  Again, the purple bedroom, which has a couple north facing windows, would be better.
• We use my show card tables for other purposes sometimes when I'm not doing shows.

We may try this again with a different advertising tactic in the fall.  I would also like to do another holiday/winter Chicago open house in 2012/early 2013.  As many of you know, the open house that I did there last year was much more successful.  I'll keep sharing details about those events as they progress.

Have you done an open house or multiple open houses?  Share your experiences!

one party down...onto the next one

Jake and I are fully enjoying his new weekends off schedule and have a lot of things scheduled for this summer.  We started July with a little open house for his birthday and the end of intern year, and then I'm hosting the open house next weekend.

I made sangria for the first time.  I am planning to write up the recipe in the near future.

The sangria was part of the biggest drink selection that I've ever put together for a party.  We also had bottle/can drinks in a cooler outside.

I can blame Pinterest for giving me the inspiration to make my own cupcake toppers.  Jake got a lot of comments from people who claimed that they had no idea how old he is. :) And yes, you can see that I did use one of my favorite color combinations here.  I am also planning to write an article about how to make your own cupcake toppers in the near future.

The cupcakes were just a little part of our food selection.

Of course I took a bunch of pictures before people arrived, but did I take pictures of people enjoying the party?  Nope.  Many apologies.

We get a lot of gifts  from my father-in-law's True Value that for one reason or another can't be sold.  We got the table with 3 chairs for Jake's birthday last year.  One chair from the set was broken so we got the 3 good ones, and they also gave us the table.  Obviously 3 chairs isn't a great number.  We finally added some more to the set this year.

Two days after the party, there was still ice in the cooler, even sitting out in the heat the entire time!

I have been working on open house projects for the entire past month, but I'm in full swing now that we're down to the last week.  I will still be offering loose magnets that people can make into sets however they like, but I've been putting together some sets, too.  I know that the one on the right is upside down!

I'm going to put those sets in bags with toppers.

I have some bottle cap magnets ready to go, too.

I have a whole bunch of new items to price tag.  Does anyone else put that off until they have an upcoming show?

What have you been up to lately?

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open house/trunk show and my weekend in Chicago wrap up

Thank you for all of the well wishes about my open house/trunk show!  The two custom orders that I got before the show were a great sign of things to come and were enough to cover all of my travel expenses.  However, I'd still put a lot of work into the prep for this show and was hoping for lots of sales there as well.  It didn't disappoint.

The Pros:

-It was a very relaxed atmosphere.  People were happy to just hang out and eat.  I highly recommend providing food and wine and playing music.
-It was a small enough group (20 or so people total over 3 hours) that I was able to talk to everyone.  It was nice to socialize and not have all of the talk revolve around the business aspect of the event.
-While I knew most of the people there, my mom and our friend who hosted had invited some friends I didn't know so I was able to network with new people.
-All but about 2 or 3 people bought at least one item.  Almost everyone spent over $10.
-Lots of people picked up business cards and/or free shipping cards without any prompting.  I am always surprised at shows how many people make purchases and don't pick up at least one business card.
-As for the new items, the glass magnets and metal charms were a big hit.  I got a lot of positive feedback about my cards and sold a few.
-As for the freebie items, they were very well received.  I had a mix of button post earrings, glass magnets, button magnets, button rings, and button hair pins.  People took just about everything except the hair pins, which just weren't a big hit at this show.  That's okay.  If I do another small event like this, I will offer freebies again.
-Linda was able to come!  It was awesome to meet her and see some of her work in person.

Personal Notes About My Display, the Logistics, Etc.:

-I like to allow at least 2 hours to set up for any show.  I only had about an hour and 15 minutes to set up for this.  While I did have some set up help, this was not nearly enough time, especially considering all of the new displays and items that I had.  I can rethink some of my new item set up to minimize the time it requires in the future, but I still need at least 2 hours.
-I knew that going super cheap on my card display easels was going to bite me in the butt, and it did.  I think I'm going to base them on card stock and then secure the card stock to my tables in the future.
-My new banner did not have enough support in the middle.  You can see that in the photos.  I will need to create some loops like the sides have to secure the top to the table next time.  Tape just doesn't cut it with the fabric table covers.  Otherwise it worked well.
-I've been thinking about adding at least one skinny table to my display for 2012 shows so I can create an L shape of sorts.  Adding all of my new displays out for event made it very apparent how necessary that is.  I don't want to crowd my jewelry or compromise the new item space.  Eventually I'd like to add two skinny tables and make an open square but for now, one should suffice.
-A 3 hour show is not a long time to sell when you consider the 3-4 hour set up/tear down time around it and the travel time.  I have a lot of family and friends in the Chicago area so I don't mind making a trip there for the social aspect of the weekend as a whole, but a local open house does make more sense logistically.

Would I do this again?

Definitely.  I would adjust a few of the logistical things I mentioned above.  I would also give potential guests/customers more notice.  We put this together in a few weeks, which worked out okay, but a few more weeks would be preferable I think.  Additionally, I'd be interested in doing a local show at some point, too.  We'll see if that idea can pan out next year.

What else did I do in Chicago?

While I was in Chicago, I had the opportunity to do a few other fun things as well.

Have you done an open house before?  How did it go?  Share your stories, tips, etc.

I included this post in Erika's It's a Wrap Link Party - 2/13/2012.

getting ready for my first 2012 event

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, one of the biggest things going in this month is an open house in the Chicago area.  It's this coming weekend.  I swore that I wasn't going to do a lot of display or product upgrades for this event, but of course now that I have all of these new ideas floating around, I had to make some of them real.  I shared my new thumb tack and magnet packaging earlier this week, which I will have at the open house.  Here are just a few of the other things that I've been working on for it the past couple weeks.

New Display Banner

Edi very generously did the graphic design work for a new banner.  We coordinated to make the layout, font, and color choices, but she put it all together.  This would have taken me hours, so I'm very grateful for her help.  When she had the final design done, I uploaded it to VistaPrint and ordered a banner.

The blank spaces are for 8 x 10 photos.  I cropped 8 of my photos to 8 x 10 size and had them printed through Target (which was a cheaper option than ordering and shipping with Shutterfly).  We decided that this would be a better option than printing the photos right on the banner because this will allow me to switch them out as my product lines change.

I feel like I've mentioned this 100 times here, but I'll say it again because I know I'll get questions otherwise.  I ordered contact paper and Velcro dots in bulk when I was teaching and still have lots of leftover materials.  That's what I used for my banner.  I covered all of the photos in contact paper and attached them to the banner with Velcro.

Jake is the only one who's seen it in person so far, and he was very impressed.  It will look even more amazing when I have it mounted on the front of my display.  I will definitely get pictures of this at the open house.

New Free Shipping Cards

I send or give out a discount or free shipping card with all of my orders, both online and at shows.  My old free shipping cards were business card sized and very plain.  I just ran through the last set that I'd printed, and it was time for an upgrade.  One thing that I'm really working on this year is building return customers, especially from shows.  I hope that these will help.  (Yep, that code does work all the time.  You can steal it any time you like.)

New Price Signs

Most of these signs are simply for new products or for products with slightly adjusted pricing.  They match many of the signs that I already use, except that these all use the new font that I have on my new banner and free shipping cards.  Here they are matted before I covered them with contact paper.

New Small Button Items

I pushed really hard to get enough of these items ready for my final 2011 shows.  I am going to pace this better for 2012 and just made a handful for this show.  I'll work on making more slowly for spring shows throughout the next couple months.  We were blessed with some sun this week so I was able to take a number of these photos with natural light.

 

New Glass Magnets

I am still in the beginning stages of my glass charms and magnets, but I've found a couple designs that I really like so far so I've been working on a few more sets of those designs.

That's a mean tease, right?  These all have music or flower designs.  I'll get some pictures of them sometime before or at the open house.

Greeting Card Packaging and Display

The biggest investment, both for money and time, for greeting cards has been the packaging and display.  I went ahead and made a full set of tabs for my display box.  As you can see, they are not tall enough to be seen over the card sleeves.  They will be alphabetized so people can find what they need easily enough.  I may adjust them at some point but not for the open house.  At this point, I only have cards for about 5 tabs so it won't be a big issue.

I packaged all of my cards in sleeves with price/description labels.  I bought most of my card packaging materials like these sleeves in bulk through ULINE, and I use address labels for almost all of my shop labels (like the ones on my jewelry boxes).  Eventually I'll have cards in different numbered sets and lots of mix and match price options, but as my inventory is not large enough to do that yet, I'm simply offering discounts for multiple card purchases.  I'll have signs with all of those numbers on my display.

What's Left to Do?

-I'm going to have a basket of $5 or less freebies.  Everyone who attends will get to pick one.  Most of these are ready to go, but I still have a few magnets to finish.
-I got a custom order within hours of creating the open house event on Facebook.  I completed the order (which was for 2 bracelets) and sent her pictures a couple days ago.  She loved them, and yesterday, she ordered 4 pairs of earrings to coordinate with the bracelets.  Those earrings will be one of my main priorities today.  I'll get pictures of all of those pieces up after the open house.
-Then I need to get everything packed up and ready to go!

What have you been working on this week?

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I included this post in Erika's It's a Wrap Link Party - 2/6/2012.