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.
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.
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… 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
