Selling your handmade goods~ Home Parties!

Last week we explored Hosting an Open House of your Handmade Goodies. If you missed it be sure to check out that post here. Another avenue for growing and selling your handmade creations is through home parties.

I just love doing home parties. They are a great opportunity to showcase your wares while chatting with some great people in a relaxed environment. Best of all there is little to no cost! I thought I would share with you today a little of what one of our home parties look like:

Try to get there at least an hour before the guests are scheduled to arrive. The thing with home parties is that your setup is always different and of course there are always those that arrive early so you want to be ready.

I always offer something small for a door prize and have little ballots for people to fill out. The ballots also have a place for their email address and a box to check if they want to join our mailing list (most people do). Once the majority of guests have arrived I often play an icebreaker type game such as celebrity trivia, however this is entirely optional depending on your hostess/crowd. You can find all kinds of quiz/trivia games just by searching the internet. It gets people fired up and in the spirit!

I usually give a little "intro" speech-who I am, how long I've been creating, I talk about hosting a home party (and the incentives) and any specials being offered that night. Then I have the hostess draw for the door prize and let people start shopping!

I make sure to have lots of postcards/business cards on hand about our website and little flyers about hosting a home party that I put in with each guests purchases. Hostess incentives can vary depending on your product pricepoints but ours consists of a set $ amount for hosting the party to be used towards merchandise, a % of the sales for the hostess to use towards merchandise and a set $ amount for every person who books a home party for her to use towards merchandise. And that's about it!

If you are in the handmade business and have never tried having a home party in your own or a friend's home I highly recommend it. What are your experiences with home parties? Do you do anything differently? I'd love to hear your thoughts!