This was great!! I have several newer vendors that will be at my holiday show this year. I'll be directing them to this video to get an idea of what to do at the show! One add on to the cleaning up part that I'm going to ask of my vendors is to pick up the tape I use on the floor to mark their spaces. Taking up the tape for 50+ spaces at the end of a show takes forever! If they all did just their own 2 pieces of tape it would save me and my helper at least an hour at the end of the day!
Thank you so much for wanting to share this with your vendors! Removing tape from floors was literally my least favorite task as an organizer! All the up and down would make my knees snap, crackle, and pop more than a bowl of Rice Krispies 🤣🤣
Two stories, same event. We a big group of people selling Chainsaw Carvings they took like four booth spaces in the upper left corner i think they were from out of state too. Anyways they played their music SO LOUD you hear it from the other corner. The other one. I was next to someone selling scrapbook supplies (i think it may have been an MLM?). She would ask the usual "do you do any scrapbooking" most people would say no and keep walking, but she has would keep trying to talk to them when they were halfway past my booth, so they would almost completely ignore me to get away from her.
Great examples and both are incredibly frustrating situations! After prepping for an event for so long and to get to the show just for something like that to happen can be heartbreaking.
Can't begin to tell you how happy is makes me to know that! Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to let me know the content is helping. Have an amazing day!
As an organizer, I never got through an event without seeing at least one of these things occur. Gotta stress the fundamentals for the Vendors because if they do those things, then they can build off of those good basic habits and develop further from there.
We just got home from an event, and the vendor next to us was loudly telling about his free samples all day for this 5 Day event. I understand getting attention, but he was loud. He also claimed to be "almost sold out" when he had full boxes of inventory. But the thing that bothered us was at the end when he put his bag of trash next to ours so we had to take it out for him. It's not a big big deal, but it was weird, and unnecessary. 😉
Staying to the very end is so on point. Sometimes there were only a few of us left where I have made my best sale of the day. As a past organizer, I charged a $5 refundable fee to clean their area before leaving. No one ever had an issue with that.
Same! I’ll be online during the premiere and I hope there’s some really good discussions happening between all the vendors watching. This is a video that I feel could honestly be an hour long and still not cover all the etiquette tips. There’s plenty in the video but hopefully we all can have a good chat in the comment section about it too! Always nice to see additional tips afterwards 😃
I once had another vendor next to me put her tall display on the edge of our common boundary line, in the flow of traffic causing peeps to shoot right past me. I had to stand outside my booth to let customers i was even there…🤬
I am a newbie looking at finding my first show. Is there any advice you would have for approaching organizers and having them take a "risk" on someone new?
Good question and yes! One of the things you could do is if there’s a specific event you’re interested in, find out what the booth sizes are. Then at home, build out a practice booth the way you’d have it set up at the show. Do a good job with it and then take pictures of it and when you contact the event organizer, let them know that you’ll work hard to make sure your booth looks good at the show and include a photo of your setup. Also let them know what you make and plan on selling at the event. Most organizers don’t mind first timers unless it’s a really formal, juried, or high end craft fair.
That’s a great opportunity to be set up as early as possible because you’ll probably sell to other vendors walking around before the event opens to the public!
That’s when I try to run around and take a look at the other vendors and get an idea where I want to visit to purchase. It’s the best time since there isn’t many customers around so you can get through quicker.
