Overexposure January 24, 2009

When I was first starting out, I gave away a lot of stuff to people in the name of “exposure”, because I kept hearing from other business owners how important it is to “get your stuff out there.” What they really meant, though, was “get your stuff out to your target market.”

Two days ago a random Etsy member asked me to donate 100 items to supply her wedding guests’ gift bags. In return, she promised to “get your product out there to a large group of people of varying ages, most of which have never even HEARD of Etsy.” (**For those who don’t know, Etsy.com is an online marketplace for handmade goods.)

This may sound appealing (poor grammar notwithstanding), but when you think about it, it’s as effective a marketing strategy as standing on a random street corner and giving away 100 of your products for free. “People of varying ages, most of which have never even HEARD of Etsy” are NOT my target market. They’re no one’s target market.  Even if they think your product is cool, Great Uncle Fred and 12-year-old Simon are not going to shop your online store. Why waste your time and budget on them?

My advice is to only give away freebies at events where at least 80% of the participants would be likely to shop from you. If you’re a crafter, gift bags at well-attended craft fairs are generally fine, especially if it gets you a spot in promotional materials or the fair is so big customers don’t make it to every booth.

Product-specific events are also good. Do you sell mainly to affluent pet owners? Then donating stuff to an animal rescue benefit is appropriate. Giving away freebies at the launch of a new fashion magazine is not. Yes, some of those fashionistas will also be affluent pet owners, but is it worth 100 wasted products to get just one new sale?

I’m not saying that those who ask for free stuff are bad people, but they are ultimately looking out for their own event/organization, and not for your business. It’s up to you to do that and to separate targeted, effective promotion from untargeted ineffective promotion.

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Biz Mister: Seth Godin April 26, 2008

I just found Seth Godin’s blog today, though he’s been writing it for years (2,500+ posts!) and he’s a best-selling author. He’s most often billed as a marketing expert, but this guy is really freakin’ smart about business matters in general. He covers lots of marketing topics, sure, but he also talks a good deal about things like innovation and customer service. I’ve already subscribed to the RSS feed and am considering buying one of his books so clearly, this guy knows his stuff when it comes to self-promotion.

Trade Show Report: Portland Gift and Accessories Show January 7, 2008

This weekend I flew up to Portland, OR to check out the Portland Gift and Accessories Show, run by Western Exhibitors. I’m exhibiting at GLM‘s California Gift Show in Los Angeles next week, so I thought it would be prudent to check out another gift show ahead of time. I wanted to see which other companies participate in these things, how their booths look, what their sales pitches are like, and so on.

I gave myself a full day and a half to go through the show. I don’t think I was even there an hour. All in all, the show was not at all what I expected and I left feeling very worried.

To begin with, the entire gift show fit into a single L-shaped exhibition hall. I knew from the outset that the Portland show is one of the smallest, so I wasn’t expecting MacWorld, but there weren’t many more booths than at a really large craft fair. Somehow it just looked bigger on the Oregon Convention Center map. I also expected there to be more visitors. Granted, I visited on the the first day of the show, and the Portland Gift and Accessories Show is the first show of the year. Also, there was an insane series of storms that hit the west coast this weekend, so that may have seriously affected people’s travel plans. Nevertheless, the number of buyers sporting blue id badges was seriously disheartening.

As surprised as I was by the buyers, I was even more surprised by the sellers. Most sections of the show were a pretty motley mix of decorative items, clothing and souvenirs. It looked like a cross between Chinatown, U.S.A. and a gift shop run by a retired couple in an old seaside town during the height of tourist season. There were evergreen wreaths and garlands, batik shawls, tiny bags of candy with punny labels, plastic wind-up toys, soaps made out of things like bamboo, goat’s milk and charcoal, salt lamps and geode coasters. There were also keychains with your name on them, strands of mineral beads, seat-belt purses and those wooden 3-D puzzles you build into models of dinosaur skeletons and famous buildings. The only new and moderately hip products were located in “Artisan’s Alley,” a single aisle all the way in the back of the hall, where the little old gift ladies had forcibly sequestered all the exhibitors under 40.

So now I’m worried. I’m not worried that my butcher-shop booth will go unnoticed; I’m worried it will stand out too much–that the precious few attendees will bypass it completely as just too weird. Souvenir shops are not my market. Will my “L.A. Contemporary” division just end up being a tiny, marginalized “Artisan’s Alley?”

I’m trying to remain optimistic, however. I can’t prepare properly for the CGS if I already believe it will be a failure. Here’s what I’m telling myself to get psyched up:

• The California Gift Show is run by GLM, which also runs the holy grail of gift shows, the New York International Gift Fair. The product divisions are mostly the same between the two shows.
• L.A. is a bigger, trendier city than Portland (though Portland is pretty hip) so there will be more buyers looking for weird stuff. It’s also got pretty big art and designer toy scenes.
• Many more of the exhibitors will be from California, rather than Oregon and Washington, which should mean more booths similar in spirit to mine.
• The CGS is a bigger show, and is easier and cheaper to get to than the PGAS for most people.
• More people want to take a business trip to L.A. than to Portland, because it’s warmer and there’s more sightseeing to do in your off-hours.
• L.A. has way more stores and businesses in it than Portland. Heck it’s the biggest city in America!

I set a goal to place one minimum order every hour to pay for my inventory and the cost of the show. I’ve heard that’s ambitious but I believe enough in my products, my booth and my salesmanship that I think I can do it. Only time will tell.

Craft Fair Report: Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco December 16, 2007

Yesterday I participated in the San Francisco Bazaar Bizarre, a large holiday craft fair (~100 vendors), that was held this year in the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park. The Bazaar Bizarre is organized mainly by Jamie Chan of Mary Jane’s Attic, along with help from her family and friends. I honestly don’t know how she does it all–heading up the Bazaar Bizarre, teaching Science, running her own fiber arts business, organizing events for the San Francisco Craft Mafia, and writing for blogs like CraftGossip’s Indie Craft Blog–but this woman is my hero. Jamie is one of the nicest people you will ever meet and never seems to break a sweat. She even has time to shop at her own events! Jamie is now the owner of some Sweet Meats, and I have added her needle felting kit to my Christmas list.

The first Bazaar Bizarre in which I participated was part of the Maker Faire earlier this year. It went extremely well from both a sales and marketing perspective but I think yesterday’s Baz Biz went even better. The publicity for the fair was excellent and the place was packed from opening to closing. Jamie made sure everything ran smoothly, from parking spots for load-in, to wheeling around the dolly when we all broke our tables down. There were food and drinks for vendors, Craft Fair Survival Kits from the folks at The Sampler, and stickers courtesy of Mrs. Grossman’s, one of the fair’s sponsors. Everyone seemed to do a brisk business and the building was warm and well-lighted.

As usual, I was not totally prepared for this event. I had all of my display stuff together, most of which was still packed up from the Baz Biz in May, but I was sadly lacking in inventory. In the rush of online holiday orders, I’ve been having trouble keeping up. I was still sending out packages on Thursday. I had about a dozen meats and a few t-shirts left over, and I made another dozen or so meats on Friday. I rationalized that since it was exactly the amount of goods I sold in one day at the last fair, I would be fine. But holiday fairs are a separate beast from spring fairs. People are shopping especially for gift items and they spend their cash much less critically. Yesterday’s Bazaar Bizarre ran from 11-6 but by 3:30 I was sold out of everything other than a few pairs of earrings. I received a lot of congratulations from shops and other vendors who saw my “Sorry, Sold Out” sign, but the truth is, I just wasn’t adequately organized.

You see, I’ve always been somewhat of a slave to the “tyranny of the urgent.” I tend to put the retail sales of plush meats above everything else. Especially in December, this is my primary source of income, so even though it keeps my business from moving forward in a timely fashion, it becomes my top priority. Orders also realistically need to get out within a week of their receipt, so despite not being the most important item on my business plan, it’s the item that usually needs to happen the fastest. In the end, this just pushes back the even more important stuff until it, too, becomes time critical. But you don’t want to have to rush things like new product development, publication design and trade show presentations.

Now that the fair is over and I have the slimmest of financial cushions, I’m trying to get back to what’s important rather than what’s urgent. Luckily, I can rest easy knowing that I will never again have to sew a dozen plush meats the day before a holiday craft fair, because by the time the next one rolls around, I will have boxes of them already made. It makes me really look forward to the next Bazaar Bizarre. Who knows how much I might be able to sell when I don’t sell out?

Inexpensive Marketing and Promotion (Part 4) December 12, 2007

And finally….

Swag bags: (Cost: ~25 cents per bag) Swag (a.k.a. schwag, freebies, giveaways, promos) are small promotional items you donate to attendees of an event. They range from the cheesy pens given away at auto sales to the luxury swag bags containing diamond watches and designer perfume given to presenters at the Oscars. Most trade or craft shows will solicit swag from their exhibitors to give to the earliest or biggest buyers, but there are other places to give away swag, too. Some businesses include a piece of swag with every order. Some set up giveaway or raffle tables at block parties or other neighborhood events, and some others just pass them out on well-trafficked street corners. There are even swag subscription companies like The Sampler, who will send your stuff out to folks who love free stuff so much, they’ll pay for it!

I’m personally a fan of swag that is cheap and does double-duty as advertisements, like stickers and buttons. You can produce a gagillion of either for relatively little money, and if your sticker or button has an awesome image on it (in addition to your company’s name or web site), you can get lots of people to do your marketing for you, giving you real bang for your buck. You can certainly go with less conventional media, like barrettes or zipper pulls, but the key is to get the most number of people to notice your brand for the least money possible.

When it comes to freebies, I like to stick to giving them away to friends and paying customers. These are the people who are the most likely to put your swag to good use, because they either already love you, or love your stuff. Also, in my experience, I have found that the best way to get people to not buy any of your merchandise is to put free stuff out on the table.

Coupons and Discounts: (Cost: possible printing costs, discounts people actually use) Coupons and discounts are tricky things. On the one hand, they can often be that extra little push between considering an item and actually buying it. On the other hand, you don’t want to overuse them or people will think you are having a hard time getting people to buy your stuff.

I sell very specific and unusual gift items, so the rules that apply to my business may not apply to yours, but here’s what works for me: I find that coupons work best for limited times, such as a semi-annual sale when you are discontinuing old merchandise and releasing new designs, or to get people from your mailing list to come to a show or event. Other good coupons are the ones you give to customers with their completed order, which encourages them to become repeat buyers.

As far as discounts go, I find that quantity discounts are the best kind there are. I used to sell (and will probably sell again soon) a “meat medley,” which was a collection of my three most popular plush designs, discounted to $80 from $84. It was a savings of less than 5% but I sold more of those collections than of any individual toy.

And that’s all she wrote.  Of course, there are other inexpensive ways to promote yourself, like having a web site, leaving postcards in neighborhood haunts, and going to networking events but this list is already four posts long, so perhaps I’ll save those for another time. If you have any other ideas that you’d like me to add or expand upon, please let me know in an e-mail or comment.  Happy hawking!

Inexpensive Marketing and Promotion (Part 3)

And even more…

Craft fairs: (Cost: 1-2 days of your time, ~$free-250, depending on fair) Craft fairs are great for a lot of reasons. Firstly, they average about 5% of what it costs to do a trade show. Secondly, you can sell your stuff directly to the public, allowing you to make you some cash while conducting first-hand market research in the process. Thirdly (I didn’t know this until recently), your wares often don’t have to be hand-crafted to be eligible. And fourthly, the press comes to you! Not only do writers for various publications visit craft fairs, they are often sponsored by a magazine like Craft, BUST, or Adorn, and are therefore guaranteed to get coverage.I would never apply for a craft fair that charges a non-refundable application fee because it indicates to me that they are either:

1. Shady or greedy people who are okay with taking money from people who might not get anything out of the deal whatsoever.
2. Such terrible businessmen/businesswomen that they need to charge application fees in addition to booth fees just to keep the venture profitable.

Here are some excellent fairs to look into that don’t charge non-refundable fees to apply:

• Bazaar Bizarre (Boston, Los Angeles, Cleveland and San Francisco)
• Renegade Craft Fair (Brooklyn and Chicago–charges an application fee which is refunded if you are not accepted to the fair)
• Craftland (Providence, RI)
• Bust Craftacular (New York City–charges an application fee which is refunded if you are not accepted to the fair)
• i heart Rummage (Seattle)
• Depart-ment (Chicago)
• Handmade Arcade (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Stitch Fashion Show and Guerilla Craft Bazaar (Austin, TX)
• Felt Club (Hollywood, CA)
• Indie Craft Experience (Atlanta, GA)
• No Coast Craft-o-rama (Minneapolis, MN)
• Most fairs sponsored by your local Craft Mafia chapter.

If you do handcraft your wares, you should definitely also have a storefront on Etsy, the biggest online craft marketplace out there.

Check back tomorrow for Inexpensive Marketing and Promotion Part 3!