Unprofitable Jewelry Shows - Help!

Question:  I have read your Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth ebook cover to cover. We have done a show at a church festival, a horse show when it rained constantly, and a Market Place Fayre.  We are doing very, very badly.  People walk by (and even other vendors) and say that our jewelery is really nice, and people stop to browse, but very, very little is selling.  Are we at the wrong venues? Is our marketing too low key (we're using mostly store-bought display stands)? We talk to people but don't pounce on them when they stop at our table.  We've purchased very nice decorative pouches to put purchases into.  We're ready ahead of time.  HELP!  We're registered for a craft show in November and would love to do very well there.  What are your suggestions?

Answer:  Thank you for writing, and for reading my e-book!

As I read your message, these are the things I felt most strongly about the situation you're experiencing:

1.  You may be doing shows and festivals where people are not really prepared to spend money.  Unfortunately, at a lot of shows people go for other reasons - such as food, entertainment etc. - and are not planning to shop.  In this situation it's nearly impossible to sell very much jewelry, because you don't have people who are interested in spending money.

Having lots of people complimenting your jewelry but not buying any of it is a sure sign of a show where people came to stroll around but not shop.

At that type of show, no matter how excellent your jewelry is, how great your displays are, or how accurate your pricing is, you'll probably have a disappointing show, because there just isn't a market.

2.  I mentioned in my e-book that church shows and school shows quite often fall in the category of shows that are not as good as they could be, because the people who are in charge of them often don't have any idea about organizing and marketing a show.

Although these people usually have good intentions, they often are more concerned with signing up as many vendors as possible - which means there's a good chance there will be way too many jewelry vendors at the show.  At the same time, they probably don't know how to promote a show to draw an adequate sized crowd, so it's a slow, disappointing show with very few shoppers.

Before signing up for any show (and especially a church or school show), always check carefully with the person or people in charge of it, to see what they're planning as far as the vendor mix, marketing, promotions, press releases, etc.

3.  At the rainy horse show, the weather most likely affected your sales, because it probably decreased attendance.  Unfortunately, one of the problems with doing outdoor shows is that your sales will depend to a great extent on the weather that day.

Also, just as a tip for future specialty shows (such as horse shows), you can make more sales if you have jewelry that relates specifically to the reason why people are there.  For example, at the horse show you could probably do well with horse cameos, horse charms, anklets to wear around cowgirl boots, cowgirl hat charms, belt loop charms with a horsey theme, etc.

4.  No matter where you do a show, you will always have the greatest success if you do some of your own marketing ahead of time.  In the book I mentioned ways to build up your mailing list, and ways to promote your presence at the show before the show even starts.  This is the most important way to make each show more successful for you than the last one.

Although you can usually count on the show promoter to bring at least a few customers to you, you don't want to be completely dependent on their efforts.  Regardless of the venue, you will have WAY more control over your success if you make it a priority to build your own customer base and do your own marketing.

At any craft show or festival you attend, you can bet that the booths with customers all day long are the vendors who do their own promoting and build their own customer lists.

Be sure to also have your friends and family tell everyone they know about your booth at the show - and if possible, give them flyers or other handouts they can give out to the people they know.

5.  I haven't seen your jewelry, so I'm not sure how well this comment fits your jewelry lines - but one of the important things in selling jewelry is to have pieces that are unique in some way - so that people won't see the same things, or similar things, anywhere else.  The best way to accomplish this is to use components that are unusual, techniques that are unusual, colors that are unusual, or focus your jewelry on serving a specific niche. Again, not having seen your jewelry, I don't know whether you already have this covered.

6.  It sounds like you have done a good job with your displays, packaging and jewelry lines, so I would say that what you need to focus on is doing shows that are not already overloaded with jewelry, and that are well promoted.  And again, you really need to work on building your own mailing list and notify people before every show you do, so that you can have the maximum customers and sell the maximum jewelry.

Keep the faith, and work on building up your customer base!