What have you done to raise your income in the past 12 months?

[sofadoc]

Yeah, I did one of those "Home Shows" many moons ago. This one turned out to be more of a "county fair" type crowd. They just plowed through the exhibit hall looking to sign up for give-aways. By mid-week, I stopped even manning the booth.
Seems to me that small town home shows WILL be more "county fair" type.
If you want serious lookers, you gotta go to the big cities. Kinda depends on how close your shop is to the kind of lookers you'll get from a big city home show.

[Mike8560]

Not a home show but I've attendand the local boat shownand use tonnage food success with contacts.
It seems to have been slowing down yearly the amount of jobs I get.   When it is food i spend about the same amout and don't get any work done while ok there and spend the next week running around see the contacts I made at the show ( don't get any work done that wek also) if I'm lucky I'll song some Jobs
last tear jt really didn't pa at all. Or were there many boat deals pleased who sold boats also.
This January I think  I'll stat at work instead but if time were good it would be a different story.

[kodydog]

Thanks for the input. Your response is helpful. Last year I visited a home show in a small city close to where I live. It was a lot like you said Sofadoc. The booths were nice but the crowd didn't strike me as the decorating type. This show is at the University Of Florida. Gainesvilles a fairly affluent town. I know what you mean Bobbin, if you're putting in the effort you want results. This is a big show with other categories besides interior decorating. Some of the people there will be potential customers but a lot of them won't. I think I'll go as a "spectator" and hand out cards to vendors who are interested in my services. If it looks like something I want to buy into, theirs always next year.

To continue the original theme of this thread. Last year I rented a booth at an antique show. I broke even as far as costs and sales go, but I picked up some good upholstery jobs. I'm going to try a few more this year.

If any one has more thoughts on attending shows to drum up business I'd like to hear them. Thanks, Kody 

Mike your post came in right before mine. I know what you mean. Some times it feels like your spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere. But if you don't keep trying you never will.

[sofadoc]

At the Home Show that I did, there was an A/C guy in the next booth. I watched him for a few days, and caught on to what he was doing.
He had some entry blanks for people to fill out and drop in a box to win $100.
When someone came up to enter, he "sized them up" as being a potential customer, or just "riff-raff". Depending on his determination, he either handed them a red ink pen, or a blue one.
I got blue ink. My helper got red ink. A few weeks later, I got advertisements from him in the mail, my helper didn't.
This was before the days when you could just fire off spam e-mail to EVERYBODY.

[Peppy]

In another life I was a basket weaver. Trying to make a living selling hand woven cedar bark hats and baskets. Emphasis on the 'trying'. I did a large christmas craft show, eleven days of torture. I did reasonably well, in spite of the pain of tending a booth 10 hours a day. My biggest mistake was #1 not having any thing to do while sitting there and #2 not having anything for sale under $20. The guy beside me had a range of products; $15, $25, $50, $95, and made a mint but mostly on the lower end. Customers would see $15 and stick around and look at everything else and maybe spend more than they intended.

I fixed the problems about day three by weaving little do-dads in my booth and selling them for $10. It kept me from going nuts with nothing to do and gave people a reason to at least slow down when walking past. It also put into peoples minds that I was making this stuff and so stopped people asking the same stoopid questions over and overandoverandover. Doing this show was a big factor into my 'getting a real job'. I realized I am not a retailer and would much rather just do the work than the real work of selling the stuff.

Long story short- find away to bring the craft of upholstery into your booth. Could you upholster a wing chair while you sit there? Like a stripped frame with everything pre-cut ahead of time and fire a staple every few minutes, not production speed. Show people the inside of furniture and give them an idea how it goes together. Or a sewing machine? I don't know, wizz up some pot holders or something? Could be a good $8 item....

[Mike8560]

kpcy id rather get a blue pen more usefull i gues that was a negative over the red. id do it again in just think everyone is cutting back now i did get plenty of contack in the past. you cant write a job up at the show though and peppy i have tried selling a few small iten like window cleaner and waterproofer but that is not the point of the show. it is  a good thing to have a big jar of mint at your booth. bring people over and you can then start a conversation and see how it goes.

[Exotic Leather]

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