Trade shows always seem like a good idea in theory; and o.k., I had no idea which of my soaps would be the best sellers ( spoiler alert- Budha soap) so I over packed and a challenge to fit into my space allotment but I did walk away with money in my pocket and a better sense of my market segment. My Saturday show got rained out, bummer.
I thought my market was wanna be hippies and allergy sufferers etc. Nope my market was definitely "tweeners". Surprise, 12 year old girls are super knowledgeable about natural bathing products. Who knew? They are also really good at talking their parents into buying handmade soaps. I discovered that people in general are attracted to handmade details in soap like carving or embeds or hand painted details but they don't want to pay any more money than for the plain soaps. Yeah right. I am at a loss why I had to explain that concept to people. Hand carved soap that I had to buy carving tools and then spend about 30 mins. with each bar, not to mention drying the apples for the embellishment should cost as much as the pine tar soap I made in a milk carton? I like talking to customers, always have. Selling comes natural to me and I love to make my customers feel at home but is a trade show worth all the work. Probably not. When I did scrapbook trade shows I usually made good coin but not as much as if I had a special event in the store, however I always had a rush of new customers from the exposure that more than made up for the work. With this show I made some connections as well. I am hoping to merchandise my soaps in other trade show booths so I don't have to break my back (again) loading merchandise and leave that up to the wonderful people that do shows every weekend, crazy fools.
0 Comments
|
Soaperwoman
|