Booth Camp Day Ten: Troubleshooting

Today I want to talk to you about what to do when things don’t feel like they are working. If you’ve been through The MAKERS Framework some of this will sound familiar but don’t drop off on me!

As handmade business owners we tend to question ourselves when the sales aren’t happening. We start to wonder if the product isn’t good enough, if no one wants it or needs it, or if perhaps they just don’t like us. Imposter Syndrome rears its ugly head and gets inside of ours.

When this happens and you feel like you are struggling. I have a series of questions I like to ask to help pinpoint the areas where I can work to get things moving again. 

These questions all line up with the MAKERS acronym that I use in my course The MAKERS Framework. These are the key elements to a successful handmade business.

M- Make the thing

A - Ask for the Sale

K - Keep their Attention

E- Earn their Trust

R- Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

S- Scale It

These are the modules in my course and while that is much more in depth than this 10 lesson mini-course, we’re going to apply those same elements to troubleshoot what might be slowing down sales in our business.

MAKE THE THING

Are you regularly producing/procuring new products for your business? 

How many hours a week are you spending creating new products? 

Are you actually finishing the products, or are you working on too many ideas at one time?

Is the expense of new materials keeping you from creating fresh products? If so, do you have any old products that didn’t sell you could re-work and make new items with?

ASK FOR THE SALE

If you are in fact generating a steady flow of new product, how are you asking people to purchase those items? 

Are you getting those pieces into your booth quickly? Are you making sure every item is clearly priced so your customer doesn’t have questions?

Are you posting pictures of your products on Social Media Channels and telling your audience how they can buy those products? Are you doing this multiple times per week?

Are you leveraging events to invite more people into your store so that they can see and purchase your products?

Do you also have a clear way for the non-local demographic to purchase your products?

KEEP THEIR ATTENTION

Are you engaging with your customers regularly through Social Media Posts? If so, are you posting multiple times a week? Do you respond to every single comment and message you receive?

Have you started an e-mail list? Are you updating them regularly? 

Have you added new products lately so that customers who have already purchased from you might be interested in purchasing again?

REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT

Are you doing all of the above things with consistency? Are you creating new product every week? Are you taking those pieces into your storefront and refreshing your space every week? Or at least every two weeks? 

Are you posting on social media multiple times a week, every week? Are you going back to items you posted months ago that haven’t sold yet and reposting pictures of those items in case your customers missed them? (hint; most of them did in fact miss them)

Are you emailing your list once a week? Or at least bi-weekly?

SCALE IT

This is for the person who is stuck on a plateau. You’re doing pretty good, but you’re trying to increase your sales and they just don’t want to budge. It’s time to figure out if there is a new stream of revenue available to you or if the answer is more volume (which ultimately means for time.) 

I love working one on one with fellow entrepreneurs who are ready to strategize growing their business. If that is something you are interested in you can access my calendar through the link below to book a strategy session with me!

Today’s Handout is a carbon copy of a Troubleshooting Guide I create for the vendors in my own store to help then overcome a period of slow sales. I hope you’ll find it helpful in your own booth space!

Finally, if this training has been helpful, but you want a more immersive training experience with more interaction and real-time feedback, check out my Booth Camp Immersive. This is a seven week Focus Group where we deep dive into a single month inside your vendor booth business to strategize how you can leverage all facets of your brick and mortar location to increase your foot traffic, sales and customer loyalty. I’d love to see you inside our next session!

Booth Camp Day Nine: Sales and Discounts

If you’ve heard me talk much about pricing you’ve heard me say that you don’t need to discount your handmade products if you can help it. This has a tendency to train your customers that the prices are arbitrary and can be changed or discounted at will. Your time and skill should be compensated, and you are running a business so it is imperative that you build profits into your pricing otherwise you won’t be able to sustain the expenses that come with it. 

However, that doesn’t mean you never run a sale or a discount, but it’s important to know why you are doing and to pick the occasions wisely.

Overstock Sales

Once you have been creating for a while you will have a stash of products that either never sold, that you don’t make anymore, or that had slight defects and you never put them out. When that group of items is large enough, I recommend running an overstock sale. If you’ve been working to grow an email list, this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate one of the benefits of being on your list!

Gather all of those items and assign the new prices. I don’t personally assign an across the board discount for these sales. I advertise “Up to __% off” based on the items with the deepest price cuts, but then I marks down items individually based on what I actually want to sell them for. Some items that have slight imperfections may get marked down 30%, while items that are in perfect condition, but that perhaps I don’t make anymore, may only be marked down by 10 or 15%

Once you’ve priced the items - and hopefully listed them on whatever web platform you are using - send an email to your list giving them a heads up on when the sale starts. And Email them as soon as the product is available for sale. Then announce the sale online and in your store once it’s actually live. This gives your email list priority to buy your items at a discount and rewards their loyalty as subscribers.

You don’t want the sale to run forever. Give it an end date (through Friday or while items last) and once the deadline arrives, remove the display and the listings.

Thank You Discounts

When you want to use discounts to boost sales I always encourage using that as a way to say Thank you to your existing customers. I heavily promote these sales to my email list and usually choose a gift with purchase option or some kind of volume discount (Buy One Get One 30% off or $10 off a purchase of $60 or more, etc)

These are great to advertise as customer appreciation sales, and once again you should promote them with a clear start and end date. They also serve to pull in traffic during specified times..

Last Chance Discounts

If you have items that have been in your area for a long time and you have the ability to change them up if they don’t sell (painted furniture, embellished decor, jewelry designs, etc) You can offer your customers a last chance sale. Tell them you are going to be pulling those items from the space to create something new on ____ date. If they’ve had their eye on a piece now is the time to get it. You don’t actually have to discount the items to use this marketing method, but if you do, I recommend only discounting 10% or so. Afterall, you can change the pieces up and bring them back in with a brand new look and maybe sell them at full price!

Appreciation Days

There are so many professions that are frequently recognized in Retail, you can use this to your advantage. As I write this article Teacher’s Appreciation week is coming up, and we plan to offer a free gift with purchase to anyone who shows a teacher’s ID. A GWP is a great way to get customers to shop with you and move products that don’t cost a lot in time and materials, or that you have an excess off and are ready to move. I’m not saying choose junk, you still want it to be appealing, but this is a good way to move product and reward shoppers.

Another option here is to offer a Volume Purchase discount (BOGO___% off deal or $__ off of a $__ purchase). This ensures that your sales are enough to support the discount without cutting too deep into your profits and it’s still a great gesture of thanks.

Some Examples; Teachers, Law Enforcement, Administrative Professionals, Non-Profits. If it’s not a national appreciation week you can always choose your own time and let local schools, LE Departments or offices know what you are doing to increase traffic for these sales.

After Season Discounts

When you have holiday or seasonal items that you don’t want to save for the next year, running a short sale the following week for 30-40% off can be a great way to move that product. This is the only time I would suggest discounts this deep, or maybe in an overstock sale. Remember though, if you can repurpose those items for another holiday, or change them up for the following year, it may be worth it not to discount them. But that decision rests solely with you as the artist or maker.

One thing that we do at my store is a Christmas in July Week. We pull together a huge Christmas Display and for one week in the middle of summer we give out customers a chance to get ahead of the crowds and shop for Christmas Decor. It’s also an opportunity to test new ideas and encourage our customers to start thinking of the customizable gifts that our vendors offer so they will hopefully place those Christmas Orders Early! 

Class and Demonstration Discounts

When a customer has already paid for a class with me I often offer a 10% discount that day. This is essentially a thank you discount for a paying customer. On demonstration days I will usually offer a volume discount. I know they are coming to see a paint demonstration, so they are likely to buy paint. I’ve offered 50% off a paint brush of your choice when you spend $65 in paint products. I’ve also offered $15 off a $75 Paint purchase. This is just a way to encourage them to spend more and thank them for coming out to the event.

So as you can see there are lots of reasons you could offer sales or discounts but they don’t have to be huge to be effective, and when used to reward existing customers or encourage volume, they don’t give the impression that prices are simply slashed at will. 

When you choose to offer discounts be sure you communicate clearly with the store you are in. I suggest sending them an e-mail. Tagging them in all your social media posts about the sale and dropping a flyer with all the details at checkout and talking with the people who will be ringing up those discounts. This is courteous so that the store employees aren’t caught off guard, but also allows them to help promote your sale. The more they know and understand what you are doing, the more they can talk with customers about it!

Booth Camp Day Eight: Events

When you are running a Retail Store, one of the mindsets you are working with is a customer always being able to tell themselves, ‘I’ll go next week.’ When your store front is always there the urgency to go shop isn’t. One way to create urgency is of run a sale, but if you run sales all of the time, you will train your customers to wait for the next one to shop, then you are always cutting into your profits. Also, if you are creating handmade goods you don’t want to overuse sales because it sends the message that you are over pricing to begin with - and you are not!

So how do we create urgency without running a sale? Well one hope is that your products are so in demand that announcing restocks pushes people to shop before you run out, but if you aren’t there yet, the best way to create urgency in a retail setting is by creating special events that customers don’t want to miss out on. 

Event Possibilities

Here are some possible event ideas for your store front. Some need to be organized by the store owner, and you can always offer to help organize the event if you want to see it happen. Speaking from experience when a vendor comes to me and wants to put time and energy into something that not only helps them but drives traffic to the store, I’m always grateful. Other ideas are things you could do yourself with the store owner’s permission.

Market Events - The biggest event would be a market event where the store invites vendors who aren’t already a part of the store to set-up for a day. Get a food truck to come out, maybe some music and create a festival atmosphere. This appeals to customers because it is a pop-up event that isn’t available all the time, but while they shop the pop-up vendors they will be shopping with the resident vendors as well. We have these in our store a few times a year and they are always a big boost to sales. 

Sip n Shop Events - These are usually a couple of hours held after work around a holiday of some sort, or at the change of season. There are typically light refreshments served as a draw and maybe some live music. We usually offer a Free Gift with Purchase or another purchase incentive that is only available during the event. It is a way to pull people into your store durring certain hours for a quick sales boost. Also make sure that you spend a lot of time refreshing the store and stocking product before these events. The goal is to pull customers in to see what they’ve been missing in hopes that tye will not only come back more frequently but leave the event talking about how great it was so that their friends and family want to come check it out.

Demonstration/Open House Events - This can be a store level event, but it can also be a small event that you schedule and promote yourself to drive traffic and sales in your booth. If you are creating your own products, or selling products for customers to use (paint, transfers, etc) then you can schedule a Demonstration Day where you will work on projects so that your customers can come watch you work, ask questions, and get to know you as an artist. When you have these events you will also get the attention of other customers in the store who didn’t come specifically for the event because they will be curious. This is a great time to get interested folks on your email list and plant the idea of your products in their minds. I usually have either a gift with purchase available for these events or a discount code that can be used at a date in the future, so that they have a reason to come back.

Classes - Holding Classes or workshops is great for your business. You walk your students through creating their own project and it’s essentially a guaranteed sale, but that process is a great opportunity to get people on your email list to keep them informed in the future. You also have the opportunity to ‘upsell’ them by offering a discount on purchases made that day. In addition to the sales benefits with the people in the class, you also have an event to market which can get attention from people who aren’t able to attend and put you and your storefront top of mind, so that hopefully they come by to see you soon!

Maximizing Event Reach

Events are a huge part of our marketing plan at my store, and I use classes and demonstrations regularly in my own business to get folks to come in and see me! Here are the things to consider when planning an event.

Scheduling - Pay attention to holidays and any other community events already scheduled when you are choosing a date for your event. Once you’ve picked a date be sure that you are giving yourself the proper amount of time to advertise and share the information. 

For Large Market Events you will want to announce the date no less than 6 months in advance to start accepting applications and taking sign-ups for outside vendors. You also may need to book your food truck farther in advance than that depending on their popularity and where you are. 

Sip & Shops and Demonstration Style Events can be announced 2-3 weeks in advance because there isn’t as much coordinating that has to be done, so they don’t require quite as much prep, and you don’t want to announce it so far in advance that your audience forget about it by the time the event arrives.

I always schedule class dates one month out to give participants the opportunity to plan for them. Many people have busy schedules and need to be able to plan to attend. This also allows time to remind my audience if tickets are still available close to the event date.

Advertising - There are a lot of ways to get the word out about your event and I recommend that you do as many of them as possible to increase your reach and visibility. Remember, even if someone doesn’t attend the event, if they hear about it it serves as a reminder that your storefront is there and drives traffic around the event as well. 

ALWAYS create a Facebook Event. The Social Media Platform shows local events to a lot of people and it is a tool you can then use to share to even more groups and invite your friends and family online!

Facebook Groups and Local Clubs are another great place to get the word out about your events. If there are local FB Groups that you are a part of you can share the Event with those folks, you can also use the invite feature to send direct messages to people in your circle. If there are local groups you can send a flyer to, that is a great option too. Bulletin Boards at Local Libraries can be a great place to hit. 

Hopefully you have an email list and you are sending regular emails through it. Adding Event information to those emails is also a great way to remind the customers who are definitely interested in what you are offering!

You can also send information about the event to your local paper, local TV stations and any other local news outlet. Many of them have community calendars that you can add your events to and reach more people. 

Making an Impression - It probably goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. You will often get first time visitors at your events, and it is important that the day of the event you are making a great impression on these customers. Customer Service should be top notch that day. Inventory levels should be high and everything should be as clean and appealing as possible. The goal is not only that they make a purchase that day, but that they want to come back again and again.

Bring them Back - When events are a big part of your marketing, make sure that when the event day arrives, you are ready to tell customers about the next big event. While you want them to come back in between events. If they are having a great time, telling them to mark their calendars to do it again will be well received.

If you are having an event make sure sign-ups for your next market are live so people can apply that very day while it is fresh on their minds. 

If this is a demonstration and you want customers to come back. Maybe have a coupon or discount code for future use that you give to anyone who makes a purchase that day.

If you are holding classes, make sure your next class has been announced and the registration is live so that these students can sign up for the next one!

Now it’s your turn! Think about how you can incorporate events into your business. Todays Download is a set of checklists for each event type that you can use to make sure you are making the most of your event!

Booth Camp Day Seven: Social Media Marketing

Word of Mouth is always the best marketing available to a business owner, because the recommendation of a friend will always carry more weight than an advertisement. These days though, most of that word of mouth is happening online! People are seeking recommendations in Instagram and Facebook and using Marketplace as a search engine for the products they need. 

That doesn’t mean we abandon all other forms of advertising, and I still believe that an e-mail list can be the most effective marketing tool available to us, but it’s worth noting that Social Media Platforms are free to use and an active profile represents an active business.

Strategy

Every post you create doesn’t have to have a strategy or angle. The occasional post for fun is ok, BUT, this is a business page. So you don’t want it to be overrun with pictures of your dog, or posts that are entirely unrelated to the products or services you sell. Social Media Posts can serve many purposes, but knowing the purpose you intend it to serve will help you create content that grows your business.

Sales - Obviously one purpose our content serves is to sell a product or service. There are multiple ways to do this. 

• One sales strategy would be to open a story arc with our customer by showing the raw materials or artistic process behind the product. Giving the customer a peek behind the curtain shows transparency and build trust. It also gets a person’s interest and makes them want to see the finished product, so they are more likely to circle back later. I suggest following this up with an “in progress” post showing the work when it is partially complete, and finally closing that story arc by sharing the finished product along with a link that leads them to where they can purchase the piece. 

• Another sales strategy might be to provide your customer with a gift buying guide that pertains to an upcoming event or holiday. As I write this Mother’s Day is coming up, so you might put together a list of products you sell that would make great Mother’s Day Gifts. You could share these products in a photo album or use Canva to create an info graphic of sorts detailing the type of mom the gifts would be suited for (i.e. soccer mom, pta mom, busy mom, etc)

• A basic sales post should always be a recurring staple in your arsenal as well. This is simply sharing a photo of an available item. Detailing a desirable feature of that product or outlining the purpose that it serves, and attaching a link where they can purchase that product - or tagging the business they should visit to do so.

Engagement - Another reason we post to Social Media is to interact with our customers and grow the ‘social’ aspect of the customer relationship. When you are building trust with an audience in hopes that they become customers, interaction is key.

• Posting a photo of yourself doing something fun (and hopefully on brand) while asking your customers a relatable question is a great engagement post. These aren’t always the easiest to come up with on the spot, but if you pay attention during the regular course of your day for opportunities to grab these selfies, you may be surprised to find they eventually become some of the easiest for you.

• Getting customer input on a new project can also be a fun way to increase engagement while also getting their interest in what you are working on. Maybe you could present a few color options (or fragrances or materials, etc) and ask your audience to vote for their favorite.

Authority Building - Setting yourself up as an expert for your audience can be very important when it comes to gaining their trust and confidence in purchasing from you. There are several ways you can do this.

• Sharing information about the creation process such as why certain steps are crucial or why the tools you use matter establishes your knowledge and credibility and allows the customer to see you as an expert that they can trust.

• If there is a teaching element to what you do, then videos where you teach or just allow the customer to watch your process serves the same purpose. Demonstrating your skill again shows transparency and builds the customer’s confidence in your ability.

Brand Awareness - One of the most important strategies in social media posting is brand awareness. People can’t shop with you unless they know about you. So growing your follower count is good as long as you are attracting the right people. Making sure that you content is on brand and appealing to the right customer for your product should always be a part of what you are posting. 

• Shareable Graphics are great for brand awareness. You can create quote graphics or information graphics with your colors and encourage people to tag a friend. This is a great way to reach outside of your existing audience to get the right eyes on your business. 

• You can run the occasional giveaway to try and gain awareness and followers, but I would use this very sparingly, as I don’t think they are usually effective. Rather they are a great way to say ‘thank you’ to your existing audience if you hit a milestone, and the new attention would be a perk, but to use it strictly as a way to grow isn’t usually that effective.

• Sharing a product that would make a great gift and mentioning that your audience should tag a friend who needs it can also be effective for reaching new people.

• Ultimately simply being consistent and engaging with comments is the most effective method because the way these sites work is that they show people what their friends are doing. So your customer’s friends will see your posts when they interact, and if you are posting content that is on brand and appealing to your ideal audience, then they are more likely to click through to your page, see more of your work (if you’re active) and follow you.

Types of Content

Image Posts - This should be a regular part of your social media marketing. These pictures create an online portfolio of your work. While these are not always the posts that will bring new people to your page, they are usually the posts that sell product, and they are definitely the content that potential customers will be looking for if they want to buy from you. Use the captions of these posts to describe the unique details of your product, tell the story behind it’s creation, or suggest the occasion when it might make a great gift!

Story Posts - Both Facebook and Instagram now have story features, which are pictures or videos that only show up in the feed for 24 hours. This is a great place for casual conversation with your audience. If your creation process takes a day or less, these are great for those story arcs I mentioned when we talked about sales strategy. At this time all business accounts have the ability to add links to their stories so it’s also a good place to share products with purchase links. With the easy to use polls available in these posts, this can also be a great place to get some customer feedback and interact with your audience.

Livestreams - I believe at this point every social media platform has a livestreaming option, so if you are comfortable in front of a camera and you can create while talking with your audience this can be a great way to let them get to know you. Building Know, Like & Trust with your audience is an important part of business, and these real-time interactions can be very effective. If you can’t create in front of a camera, but you create product in collections, then you could do a livestream to reveal a new line and use video to show off details that pictures can’t capture. 

Reels/Shorts - These are short edited videos you can use to get your customers attention. You might be selling product in these piece of content, but mostly you would be showing off your creation process, giving folks a behind the scenes view of your process or using music and sounds to create a brand aesthetic that grabs the right customer for your products. If you are teaching, you might create really short tutorials in this type of content to drive more traffic to your livestreams or full length videos. This content is usually going to get a potential customers attention, and hopefully drive them back to your profile to learn more about what you offer and hopefully follow you or purchase products.

Full Length Edited Video - This kind of content creation if really great if you are teaching your audience how to use a product that you sell or if you teach in-person workshops and want to give your audience just enough to want to learn more. It is a bigger time commitment and really falls under content creation more so than social media marketing, but it bears mentioning here as something to consider.

How - To

Social Media Channels are forever changing and if I record a video today showing you how to do something, it could change tomorrow. My recommendation for using all of these features is first to simply play with them. You can test out all of the mechanics without publishing a post or video and if you accidentally do, you can always delete it later. I think you will learn the most this way. The second thing I suggest is simply going into these apps and using the search feature and typing “how to (create a reel, post a story, etc)” all of these platforms have users who are experts and constantly share how-to videos and teach you to use the new features. This will be much more effective for you since you’re more likely to get real-time accurate results.

Now let’s plan it out! Today I’m sharing a content calendar that I give my students inside the framework to map out a week of social media content to help them stay on track when it comes to promoting their products and services!

Booth Camp Day Six: Display Basics

Displays can make or break the success of an in-person sales experience, especially when you are creating the display and leaving it in the hands of someone else as you do with a vendor booth. Truly, we could talk about displays all day and still have talking points left to discuss, but for today I want to talk about the most important things to remember for displays in a vendor booth. 

Awareness

If I walk into the store where you vendor booth is located, will your space stand out to me? What is it about our display that will get my attention? Now make a note, I’m not saying that you want your booth to stand out so much that it doesn’t feel like it fits with the store surrounding it, rather, what is catching your eye and making me think that I need to see more?

Remember those oversized items we talked about? These are a great way to pull someone’s eye into your booth. If it is artwork then maybe it is hanging high on the wall in the back of your booth and pulling someone in to check out the details. Maybe you have a large collection of keychains displayed on an old chandelier in the center of your booth and the customer just has to get closer to see the details.

Maybe you’ve built a great sign with your logo that hangs from the ceiling in your space with baubles that hang down and catch the light so that someone walking around can’t miss it. 

These are just a few ideas of how you can use eye-catching display elements to bring people into your space.

Also, consider the angles. Approach your space from every direction that a customer might and assess the appearance. For example, if you are using a shelving unit to display decor items, but it is possible for a customer to approach your booth from a direction behind that shelving unit, make sure you are using the back of the unit to display product as well. 

Accessibility

Once you have the customer in your space, make sure that they can interact with your product easily. When you are putting a display together, always keep the customer in mind. Can they reach the items easily? Unless we are talking about high ticket items or oversized pieces that are hanging above eye level to pull people into your space, a customer should be able to access anything they want to purchase in your space without needing assistance. Once an item is in the hand of your customer the chances they will follow through on that purchase are significantly increased. If they cannot pick-up and hold your item they don’t form any kind of attachment to it and it is easy to forget to come back to it, or to get ready to check-out and decide they ‘don’t need it today’. So accessibility is one of the most important elements of a good display.

In this same vein it is important that every element of your display be as physically stable as possible. If a customer feels that by picking up an item they could disturb a precarious display, they are most likely to keep walking. So do everything you can to create stability.

When laying out the space, consider the customers comfort. If you have a children’s product, you want to make sure that a mom with a stroller can get in your space. Always, consider wheelchairs and walkers. Never display a product on the floor unless it is intended to be used that way; for multiple reasons. For starters, you never want to create a trip hazard, you want customers to move comfortably and unimpeded through your space. Also, product on the floor can send the message that it isn’t that valuable, and it’s below your eye-level so most customers will never notice it anyway!

Availability

We already discussed inventory levels, so you know how important volume is to healthy retail sales. When we are talking about displays though, availability means making sure a customer sees all of their options. It’s a  proven fact that when someone sees a collection of similar but different items, their mind begins to decide which of those things is their favorite. Once a person chooses their favorite they’ve made an emotional attachment to that piece, they’ve also spent time making that decision and so they feel invested. This process makes a customer much more likely to purchase this product. 

It is also important the price for each and every item in your space be easy to locate. I highly recommend pricing each individual item so that when a customer picks it up they know how much it is. Table signs are appropriate in some situations, but remember those can get moved easily, or if the product itself gets moved somehow and the sign isn’t nearby the customer won’t know the price. The majority of customers will simply sit the item back down if they can’t find a price. So making sure the price is clear and easy to locate is really important for sales.

Booth Camp Day Five: Inventory (Volume)

So now that you’ve taken some time to figure out the variety of product you are going to stock your space with, today we care going to do some math and talk about how much inventory you need to have in your space. The key to a profitable retail business is volume. 

We’ve talked about pricing for profit and growth. So as long as you do that, this next formula will work for you to ensure that your sales goals are helping you make money & grow your business.

Sales alone do not equal profits. For starters you have to pay for the materials that go into the product and you have to cover your overhead expenses (rent, website, subscriptions, etc). Then you need to pay yourself for the time that you’ve put into making the product, and after those things have been paid, you can see how profitable your business is.

The Math

So at the end of day, it is a numbers game. If you are using The Perfect Price Prescription we know that material & labor cost account for 25% of the sales price. So in a booth rent scenario, being profitable isn’t just about getting a check at the end of the month. It’s about getting a large enough check to cover all of your expenses (including your labor) and then some.

For this example we’re going to say that rent is $150 and the store takes a 15% commission from sales. In this scenario, selling just enough to cover your rent means a minimum financial loss of $60/month. I say minimum because we didn’t factor in other expenses you might have such as subscriptions, website fees or tools.

In my opinion, “breaking even” in a booth is gross sales of double your rent. With this example that would pay for the booth related expenses, pay you for your labor costs on the items sold, and net a profit of about $30/month for you to reinvest in new materials. Now, that is a bare minimum. This should be the goal for the hobbyist who doesn’t need to really make money to support themselves, only needs an outlet to move product so that they can make more.

The maker or artist who is trying to grow a profitable business that actually provides income should have a minimum monthly sales goal of gross sales that equal five times the rent of their booth. Again, in this scenario that would sales of $750. Deducted from that would be $150 in Rent, Commission of 112.50, and $187.50 that cover the time and materials you have in those products (this amount should always go back into your business for more materials) That leaves you with a net profit of $300/month. Depending on your goals you may keep half for yourself and put the rest back in your business, or you may reinvest it all to grow your inventory in an effort to grow your sales!

Since that is what I consider a minimum goal, I will tell you that I believe your push goal would be 10 times your monthly rent. Once you are hitting that goal and still building volume I think it is time to increase your space to see if you can scale in the location you have. Most locations will have a bit of a ceiling. You can work on your marketing and display and still there is only so much traffic you can get in a single location. At this point you can choose to stick with one location that has an amazing presence and display and add an online element that you can scale to almost unlimited volume, or you can add a second booth location. That is definitely a question for another day and exactly the kind of thing we can talk about more in one of our Zoom Calls inside the membership!

Volume

Now that you know your sales goals, let’s talk about how that translates into volume of product. If you have a Sales goal of $1500/month. You need a minimum amount of $3000 worth of product in your booth space at all times. I say minimum because depending on the size of your space, you may need more than that.

Here’s the first rule you need to know; You will never sell more than half of the product in your booth at any given time. There are a few exceptions to this rule but they are few and far between. Once your ‘storefront’ is half empty it appears picked over and customers make a mental note that ‘the good stuff is gone’ and if they are shopping your product at that point, they are usually looking for deals.

The second rule you need to know is this; a successful booth has a constant steady flow of new product - OR - a constantly changing layout. Any local store has a steady flow of regular customers and if they look at a booth space and it looks exactly the same as it has the past few times they have been in, they will keep walking. So it is important that you are always bringing in new product and moving your product and displays around in your booth. This can be as simple as changing which piece is on your front table with items hanging against the back wall. It’s just enough shifting to make sure that your customer sees something is different and chrome closer to investigate. If you have enough product, they are always sure to see something they didn’t see last time, but you must get them into your space in order for that to happen. 

So you have your worksheets from yesterday where you grouped your items into size levels and price levels. I’m not going to ask you to do detailed math and add every single price up to see where your retail value is. Though if you have a good inventory management system you can do that. For our purposes though average prices will do. So look at the list of your price levels and assign average prices to those levels. For this example we’ll use $10, $50 & $150. Remember the average ticket items are what you create the most of and what you are marketing the most, so we want about 50% of our inventory to consist of this price point. Then the remaining half will be spit between high ticket items and low price points from a price perspective. Here’s what that looks like.

Your Rent is $150, so your initial sales goal is $1500, and you need $3000 of product in order to hit that goal. 50% of that is $1500 of $50 items, so you need a minimum of 30 average priced items in your space. 25% is $750 in high ticket items which means 3-4 high-ticket pieces available. Last you have 25% or another $750 in low ticket items or 75 low priced items. Once you have that volume, work on doubling it, because remember, you can sell 10 times your rent if you have enough product, create beautiful displays and market your business well. We will get more into displays and marketing next week but those things don’t matter if you don’t have product, so the first element we have to build up is product volume.

So let’s get into the visuals. Download today’s worksheets to plug in your own numbers and determine what kind of product volume you need to be aiming for!

Booth Camp Day Four: Inventory (Variety)

In tomorrow’s Inventory lesson we will talk about volume levels in Inventory, but today I want to talk about the products themselves and what to consider when creating a product catalog. I will talk a lot about art, decor and handmade products, but the same rules apply if you are curating collections for resale.

There are two categories into which you can split your inventory in three levels; Price and Size. Sometimes they will correspond with one another, but not always. 

Ticket Price 

It is important when stocking a booth space to consider all of the different customers who will come through your space. Some will be looking to make statement purchases and others aren’t looking to spend money at all, they are just browsing. You want your booth to invite everyone in, the active shoppers and the browsers. Because once you have them, if you have great products and a well designed display you can turn browsers into buyers and paying customers into collectors of your work and products.

High Ticket Items 

Depending on what your product offering is, this price point could be anywhere from $50 - $5,000. These items typically take longer to sell, though not always. The point of these big ticket items is to catch your customers eye and really pull them into your booth to see not only this piece but the rest of your work.

Average Price Point

Again, it depends on if you are selling soap or furniture what this price will be, but these are the items that you generally sell the most often, and they are usually the focal point of your product offering. Having plenty of options in this price point is a must, since this is what you are producing most often and trying to move at a higher rate.

Quick Sales/Impulse Buys

These are small versions of your work. Perhaps items creates from scraps of larger products or if you are buying for resale these are things that compliment your main products but make an easy grab and go. Customers don’t have to think about whether they can afford these items. It’s an easy, “love it, buy it” decision. These are for the people who love what you have, but don’t want to spend much money or don’t realy need anything, but just want to support you.

Product Size

It’s important to create a display with depth and interest. That means, you don’t want 200 of the same sized thing peppering the space. That is done a lot in big box stores and if you’ve built your brand to the point that the demand is so high you can’t keep up with it, then maybe you have a product you could do that with. MOST of us though, need visual interest to pull our customers into our displays. 

Oversized Items

These are large pieces that once again will really serve the purpose of drawing people into your space. These are pieces that a customer knows exactly where they are going, and sometimes takes time to consider and come back to pick-up. Again, you won’t sell as many of these most likely, but they are perfect for pulling people into your brand to see what else you have to offer.

In some retail spaces these items are display only. Think of a giant Wine Bottle that leads you to a wine section, or a huge Paper Mache Rattle hanging from the ceiling that indicates where the Baby section is. This is possibly a good option if all of your items are small, even if they are high-ticket items. But if you create your products and you can create a couple of oversized pieces that pull people in, I would put a price on them. You never know what someone’s space is like. These pieces are often bought by other business owners outfitting their own commercial spaces. We’ve sold these to coffee shop or restaurant owners and office spaces even.

Average Size Product

These are once again the pieces you will typically sell the most of in your space. Customers can usually pick up these items and carry them out of the store by themselves. Even if your main product offering is larger furniture pieces. It is often ‘smalls’ and tabletop decor that will sell most easily for this reason. If this isn’t your main product offering you don’t want to overfill your space with it, but staging for larger items is really important, and since these items can move quickly, it is important to have product available to refill the empty spaces quickly.

For most booths this is the main source of income and typically the primary item being marketed. Though if your focus is smaller items like jewelry for example, you may add decorative jewelry boxes or neckforms for staging to be the ‘medium sized’ item in your display. While it is possible that these items are not for sale, unless it is hard to replace and crucial to your display, I personally price everything. Customers get really disappointed when there is an item that they love that isn’t for sale. Another option for these items if your product is small is to crate gift bundles. Maybe as a Bath and Body Product Line you collect items of the same fragrance and package them in a box or basket to have a larger product - and price point - available for purchase. It also makes gift giving even easier!

Small Items

These are items that are easy to pick up without asking the question, “but where will I put it?”. These are usually going to be your low ticket prices also, but they don’t have to be! Smalls make great collections inside a display, and collections make customers subconsciously choose their favorite. Once they have a favorite it is hard to walk away. If you are creating a product you might be able to repurpose your scraps into unique small trinkets, or if you create soaps for example you could cut smaller bars to create sample sizes. Sample doesn’t necessarily mean free! Just an opportunity to try a smaller purchase before making a decision.

Next week we will spend a day talking about Displays and there are also three eye-levels to consider. For now though, gathering your inventory is the important part. So in today’s handout I want you to sort your existing products into these categories, and if you see gaps brainstorm the products you could add to fill in those spaces. Remember to keep your customer and your brand in mind when adding product. New Products should compliment what you already offer when possible!

Booth Camp Day Three: The Perfect Price Prescription

Today I am giving you access to my mini course that is all about handmade pricing. This is really important because no matter how much volume you move in your business, if you aren’t pricing for profit, then you can’t make money!

Resale Products

If you are buying products for resale, the goal is always to increase the price by 100% or multiply the wholesale price by two (2). Some companies will give you an MSRP that you must sell your products at, but many will let you brice how you would like. When you control the pricing of resale product I would encourage you to price just enough over double wholesale to also recoup your shipping costs.

The Perfect Price Prescription

Handmade Pricing Made Easy

I’d love to hear how this training helped you! Drop a note in the comments!

Booth Camp Day Two: Online Presence

If you are going to have a business in 2022, it is imperative that you have an online presence. I have worked with vendors who rely solely on the presence of the brick and mortar that houses their booth to do all of the advertising and marketing on their behalf, and while I hope that your storefront is working hard for you as the vendor, I believe this is an irresponsible business move. The future of the storefront where you pay rent is out of your hands. You need a presence for your own business and brand that you control. 

Treat your vendor booth as your own storefront inside a commercial mall. The Mall will attract customers by the nature of being a mall, but if you want people to come specifically to shop in your store, you have to advertise and market your own business.. JCPenny’s and Belk don’t rely on Simon Malls or Tanger Outlets to promote for them, and they sure don’t just fill their store and wait hoping that someone will drive by! They actively market their brand and their products to potential customers. This is how you should approach your own business.

You also never know what the future holds for the store you are in. I’ve known several vendor based stores that have closed unexpectedly in the past. Vendors with a solid online presence have the ability to bring their existing audience with them to a new location in a new store, or even to shift to an online model. Vendors with no online presence, no email list, no way to connect with existing customers will have to start all over again in a new location.

Time and energy invested in growing an audience for your business is never wasted. So on that note, here is what I consider to be a comprehensive list of the places you need to establish a presence online as well as walkthrough videos to show you how to do it. 

Google Business Listing

If you don’t already have an email for your business, you can create this by simply setting up a business email and indicating that you are in fact a business. Google will then prompt you through setting up a Business Profile.

Fill it out completely. Choose multiple categories that describe your business. Add photos of your products. Upload your logo. Put in the store hours. There is actually an option to set your store up inside an existing location for Google Maps.

Facebook Business Page

Use Canva to create a Cover Photo for your page. You can put together a collage of product photos with your logo over the top if you are just getting started. Once you’ve uploaded the photo click on the picture and click “edit” to add a caption. This is one caption that Facebook doesn’t police so make sure someone who is finding your page for the first time gets all of the information they need in this caption! Here are some examples;

Fill out every available space in your about section. Make sure that your profile picture is either your logo or an identifiable product photo. Remember when you comment as your page this is what will show up. Make it recognizable.

Instagram Business Page (Linked through Meta)

If you don’t already have an IG account for your business then create one. Under Profile Settings select Professional profile. You can then link this account to your Facebook so that you can manage both accounts through the Business Suite provided by Meta. If you don’t have a website or want to direct people to more than one place use linktr.ee to set up a link menu. 

Email List

At the end of the day you don’t own Facebook or Instagram or a plethora of other platforms. Having an Email list ensures that you can always communicate with the people who want to hear from you. If you have a website this is a great place to capture emails with a simple pop-up. You can also link to your email sign up through a linktree page and add the hyperlink in the caption of your FB cover. Basically I recommend putting this everywhere to get as many emails as possible!

Website

Even if you aren’t immediately starting with e-commerce, or if you have your products available through a webstore connected with your vendor mall, I still recommend setting up a basic website for your business. You can always link to the place where you sell your products but having a domain where you have control over the information customers receive is valuable.

Check out today’s video for some resource walkthroughs and use the PDF provided to make the process simple and check things off as you go.

Booth Camp Day One: Simple Branding

Welcome to Booth Camp! We are starting this series by getting back to the basics. So if you’ve never had a booth before, you are in the right place. If you have been creating and selling for years, but you are ready to do more in your business, then revisiting the basics is exactly where you need to start! So let’s dive in!

When you are starting any business endeavor there are a few things that you need to establish as soon as possible.

1. What do you sell?

2. Who are you selling to?

3. How will they buy from you?

I know, I said this was about branding, and it is! Knowing the answers to those three questions will help you land on a name, colors and aesthetics for your marketing, and it will help you decide how you need to talk to your customers.

For example if you are selling Leather Goods for men, you probably don’t want to name your business something flowery like The Blue Dahlia, and use a feminine color scheme in your marketing.

Instead you will probably pick a name that reflects the product, something like Smith’s Leatherwork or even something like DRS Essentials (if those are your initials). You will probably choose a color palette that is more natural and earthy. Because that will resonate more with your customer and communicate what your products are.

If you are selling handmade accessories and toys for kids, you will likely choose a more playful name and have a more colorful aesthetic.

While it is important that your brand feel like you (especially if you are an artist) it’s also really important that it match the products you sell so that you can market your business well. So I’m going to give you three more questions to consider before you move into the branding basics.

1. How do you want your business to be recognized?

2. What do you want people to say about your business?

3. How do these answers tie back to you as the business owner and/or artist?

After taking some time to mull over those questions, let’s break down the Branding Basics you will want to establish for your business

Business Name

It’s true, you can always change the name of your business, but the more you grow the harder this will be, and you don’t want to do this often because it will confuse your customers. As Donald Miller says, “When you confuse, you lose.”

Choose a name that isn’t product specific. Something that will still work even if you move into new products. When I first began making jewelry years ago I named my business Wired Essentials because I was creating jewelry and my designs all used artistic wire. When I began making candles, that name didn’t fit. I started a second brand called the crafty wino, because I poured candles in recycled wine bottles. Then when I added Furniture and Canvas art in 2018, I didn’t think it was a good fit for either name….

So in 2018 I rebranded and put all of my products under one brand; MADE by Danielle. It encompasses anything I want to create and sell and the thing that ties them together is me, Danielle.

I know lots of people who choose kind of quirky names because they can readily brand them without being product specific. You likely already have a business name at this point, and that is fine. I would encourage you before moving forward though to consider that name and if it will continue to fit your business as you grow. If you feel like you need a change. The sooner you make it the better!

Brand Visuals

Once you have a name, I recommend choosing a color palette, a logo & 2-3 fonts you like. If you have a lot of design experience then the sky is the limit, but this all sounds just a little overwhelming, I want to make it easy for you.

Step One: Head to Pinterest and create a Mood Board. Pin items that have the vibe and aesthetic you want in your business. Then choose one photo that best represents the colors (even if not the overall vibe)

Step Two: Head to coolors.co and create a free account. Upload the photo and use the color picker tool to create your palette. Save that palette image so that you have your hex codes.

Step Three: Choose your fonts & Create a Logo. I recommend Canva (Check out the video for a walkthrough)

Brand Message

The next thing you want to do is create an over arching brand message. Some people actually use this message as a tagline, others simply use it as a guide to formulate all of the copy (words) they use when advertising or marketing their business.

Successful marketers will tell you that you don’t want to simply sell a product; you want to sell an experience or transformation. So not only will this message tell your customers what you offer them, but how it will change them into who they want to be, or reinforce what they already believe about themselves.

Businesses will actually generate a lot of brand messages over the course of time because most don’t offer one single product or offering, but your overarching brand should have a single message that helps you focus and filter new ideas to ensure that they fit your brand.

For example, once I rebranded to MADE by Danielle I created an acronym; Meaningful, Artisan Designs & Essentials. My brand message? Thoughtful Gifts & Unique Decor. Because who doesn’t want to be considered thoughtful? And aren’t we all trying to be unique?

This message is one sentence that you could use to answer the question, so what do you do in your business?

“Handmade Jewelry for the Trendsetter” (Who doesn’t want to be a trendsetter?)

“All Natural Bath and Body Products for people who care about the environment” (Who doesn’t care about the environment)

It speaks to what makes your product special, and who that product is for.

Pull it all together

Now for your homework! Fill in all of this information in today’s PDF handout.