First show coming up.

[Tiristia]

I have my first show coming up. There is a nice one day festival in my home town every year for July 4th. I paid $60 for a booth. They give preference to people who were there last year, then residence, then whoever. They also make certain there are not multiple booths selling the same kind of thing. I’m a resident and evidently I was the first soaper to put in an application because I found out yesterday I got a booth.

I have been working like crazy trying to get enough soap together to take. I found soap savers at BB&B yesterday two for $0.99. I bought 20 packs. My main worry is it is an outside event, so if it rains I am hosed. I will have a bunch of stuff with no place to sell it.

It isn't specifically a craft show. I'm not sure if that will be a bad thing or not. But I think they will have a bunch of random stuff. From what I remember it is mostly food vendors. I have not gone to it in about 3 years. But when my daughter was a child we went every year. It always seemed like most the community did the same.

 

[donniej]

Have as much product to keep the table from looking empty.
Spend some time working on presentation.
Have all prices very easy to see.
Bring lots of $1 and $5 bills for change.
Bring brown paper "lunch" bags to give customers to put there purchase in.
Wear comfortable clothes, bring plenty of drinks & snacks.
If your booth doesn't have shade then it's a good idea to bring your own.

I also bring a pad of paper and a pencil so I can draw when things are slow.

 

[Tiristia]

I bought a 10ft shade canopy from Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. My hubby won $750 on Bingo and gave most of it to me for stuff like that and ingredients to make enough product. Most the stuff I've been making has a pretty fast cure time, about 4 weeks. I only have about a week left to get enough made. I'm doing 7lbs (36 bars) a day right now. I only have 2 molds between that and a full time job it is hard to get anything more than that done. I need to make another mold sometime.

Packaging is going to be a pain. I'm doing plain brown paper wrapped around the bars and sealed with the label for the bar. The paper is a giant roll of construction paper from the painting section of Home Depot, so I have to cut all of it.

My business cards and banner are in white and purple. I got white flat sheets for table cloths. They cost $3 and do the same as the $15 actual table cloths. I have plastic plates to stack the soaps up on. But they are the wrong color so I got some purple fabric to cover the plates with.

I have plastic bags for purchases. They were 1/2 the cost of the paper bags. But will this be a problem for the soap with it being so hot out? I am in south Texas so it will probably be in the triple digits by then.

 

[emilaid]

You sound really organized and I'm sure your soaps will go down a storm! It's good that you're the only soap vendor there because people love stuff that's different!!

Good luck and let us know how you get on!

 

[honor435]

well, how did it go?? wondering.

 

[krissy]

ya, how did it go??

 

[Bigmoose]

Yes how did it go?

Bruce