My Experience at the Indoor Yard Sale

If you have never had the opportunity to do a "live" show it can be a very fun experience. I have been blessed to gain a wealth of knowledge and experience in the craft show circuit from my mom who has been a part of the scene for as long as I can remember. I have written previous posts on mom's jewelry blog about the subject that you can find here and here.

For this particular show I took a different mindset. Events put on by the local newspaper are always well attended but since this was classified as a "yard sale" I put my thinking cap on. There will be specific organizations/groups in your own community whose events usually draw a good amount of attendees, whether through support of the organization or just good advertising/promotion of the event. I decided to take supplies from Rouge River Beads since locally they can be hard to come by. I also took a selection of handmade items but tried to keep them in the $5-$10 range as I felt people would be looking for a deal. Then I decided to try and bring as much traffic directly to me as I could. Here's how I did that:
*I put the event in our online shop's announcement AND included it in our newsletter for March
*Placed an online classified ad in our area in the craft and hobbies section. Title was simply Need Beads? with details of the event in the body
*Blogged about the event then listed it on my blog's sidebar for a month
*For handmade-I made coupons for a FREE pair of earrings and handed them out to the girls I work with at the restaurant. They had to come and see me at the show in order to receive their earrings (a pair picked by me and packaged up pretty with a thank you note). I did the same for my local Facebook friends

I'm definately glad that I put the extra work into promoting the event and got to meet some great new people and see some old friends. I hope that this post helps those of you looking to venture into the "live" market! If you have any questions you are welcome to leave a comment or email me directly kawarthabeads@gmail.com

Don't forget...only two days left to win this great Easter banner for your shop!