my pennies on trade/retail shows

I have quite a bit of experience with shows both as a buyer (for Stone Fabrics - dress fabric retailer, and The Garden Store - high end design and gift shop) and a trader (Bess Starey Metal and Enamel Designs) nationally and internationally. Whilst sometimes they are an unavoidable and necessary route, they should not be seen as a be all and end all. A lot of research should be done before hand to see if the show attracts the right customers, which should entail talking to traders and not relying on the show organisers spiel; they are desperate to sell you the square footage, and will very likely bombast you with facts and figures that are irrelevant to your practise. It is also worth remembering that even the traders are unlikely to tell you the truth of the horror, especially at the show. I was as guilty as the next person for saying “Oh yes! this is a brilliant show!” when in reality I was only just covering my costs - It doesn’t do to be pessimistic at these things, and a bit of self delusion goes a long way to furthering sales. Success is contagious, after all.

I bundle Trade shows and retail shows together in this evaluation, and in many ways they are similar. The main difference is with a Trade show you need to spend a lot of money on marketing material, the clients want to know every finer detail about the product they are buying. You do not need a huge amount of stock, more importance should be put on making the stand look brilliant than getting every product on show. With retail shows it can be tricky to gauge what will sell, and so need so much more stock, and somewhere to store it (and the packaging). It is likely that your product that sells around the £20.00 mark will fly, and if you have something under a tenner then even better - But always have a centre piece, it will possibly be unaffordable to the passing Sunday shopper, but once they’ve been lured in with the crowd pleaser they are easy prey to sell the £10.00 key ring to. (My god, I sound cynical, but it is true)

In my previous incarnation I found the BCTF (British Craft Trade Fair) in Harrogate to be quite good for sales and generating new outlets. Being located in Yorkshire meant that it attracted a lot of Scottish and Irish customers that were less inclined to do the trek to London. The same organisers do Design Edge, located in Surrey which I found to be worse than useless, having already got a lot of outlets in that area and not wanting to drench the market. Obviously, it depends on what you need out of the show, but these factors should be remembered.

It is also wise to remember the extortionate costs that go along with setting up a trade show. It is not just the stand (which can be astronomical), but also the hire of the van, hotel costs, eating out, time off work. If, for instance you spend £2000 on a trade show (a modest estimate), you really want to be aiming at getting back £10,000. In most cases this is unrealistic. If you factor in the future income things look better - not all customers will order there and then, they sometimes like to go home and cogitate for a while, I have even had a call from an outlet in Richmond upon Thames three years after a show, finally deciding she’d like to stock my work. I suspect in this day and age with access to the internet et al, the Trade Show is a dying market. The argument that your goods have to be seen and touched and felt falls flat when you spend the money on good photography and even sending out free samples to prospective clients. Direct marketing can not be underestimated.

There is a certain amount of snobbery that goes along with these shows, especially the prestigious ones like Origin, organised by the Crafts Council (retail). Just getting into one of those shows can further your career to heights not dreamt of. Clients like to feel they are buying work from someone who has made it, or is the next ‘hot thing’, being at these places proves to them that you are not some fly-by-night part time playing at the craft game thing. I always planned, as an experiment, to send out invites to my mailing list customers, plus a few new ones saying I would be doing Design Edge (or what ever show) and not actually do it. I figured I could always say I had to cancel. I would include leaflets and website details in the invite. I never got to test this theory but I’m willing to bet I’d get very nearly as many orders from NOT doing the show as I would have from doing it, without any of the outlay. If proof be needed, Last year at BCTF - orders taken before the show were three times higher than orders taken at the show, and that was solely on an announcement of a new targeted website plugging my new lines.

I guess my conclusion to what I have learnt from my experience with trade/retail shows is do them, but only in moderation, and if you do make sure you send out lots of pre and post marketing, as more often comes from that than anything. If you can get grants then I’m sure it helps (I always found filling in those horrendous forms more trouble than the measly £200 you’d get back from them), but do not ever fall into the trap thinking that unless I do trade shows I will not find further outlets, because it is simply not true. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.