Supplies for Sale
We've got a spare EZ-UP (express II) cover for sale, white, it's water resistant but not waterproof. Great for shade and for places where you only get a light rain. It leaks along the seams in a heavy rain.
Also a cash register, works but will need new ink/tape soon (it's light). It is missing one of the spring arm things that holds the money down, but the others are intact. We got it secondhand so we never had a manual.
If you're interested, let us know. They'll go on ebay soon and I'll put a link here.
Labels: display, small biz
Card Pics Example
Here's an example of the earring cards, taken in fairly bright light (overcast day, but directly in the light from the window. You can see how the grey card might be very hard to distinguish from the white cards in the dim lighting at some shows, especially if they're not next to each other. Also note how bright the logo is compared to some of the earrings. So, now all we have to do is flip all the cards and assign inventory numbers. Ick.
Labels: display, earrings
Earring Card Issues
We had a great idea for our earring cards. We designed the card so it could be punched at the top to hang on a hook, and the earrings would go on either side of the punch. In the center of the card was the logo, and the name/website at the bottom. The card was correctly sized to fit inside the earring boxes we bought. Materials for each pair of earrings would be printed on a little sticker that would go on the back of each card. Earrings would go in two price categories, one on white cards and the other on gray. It seemed like such a good idea. Unfortunately after we printed 900 cards and put earrings on half of them and hung them all up, we noticed some problems.
1. Under poor lighting, it was impossible to tell one color cardstock from the other, and this caused lots of issues. At one show I ended up selling all the earrings for the low price, since no one could tell them apart.
2. The bright logo, the shiny chrome gridwall, the shiny hooks, etc, were very distracting and you couldn't really see the earrings unless you picked up the card. It was overwhelming and lots of people just walked on by rather than coming into the booth.
3. Inventory nightmare...we had no idea what we'd sold, and what might have been lost or stolen. We had a list of what we made but it was often difficult to match the earrings to the list.
4. Setup/teardown mess. In the future we might have to figure out a way to store/transport the earrings on the hooks so we could just pop the hooks onto the gridwall.
So our first year in the big leagues taught us a bunch (you can never go wrong with more lighting) and we're getting ready for another busy year.
Step 1 is to flip over all of the cards so the logo is on the back and the earrings sit on a plain card for better visibility. I don't think we can afford new gridwall right now but our next purchase will be white gridwall & hooks. Then we're going to assign an individual inventory number to everything we have (which will involve changing out everything we have at All Things Creative and the CMAA gallery) and link those numbers to our list. Hopefully then we'll know what item went where, and what we sold at each show. Hopefully we'll start to do enough shows that we can get a feel for what sells where.
Labels: display, earrings
How not to pack things
UPS is not the gentlest way to send packages to me, but it really helps if you pack things correctly to start with. I ordered some stuff (display stuff for the upcoming Boston show) and it came packed thusly.
Re-used, wrong size box:
Crossed out label (use a Sharpie folks!)
Interior packaging...items in a plastic bag with some peanuts and bubble wrap tossed on top.
Close up:
Surprisingly nothing was broken, bent or otherwise mangled.
Labels: display
