Setting out your booth...

[rdb]

I couldn't help myself...

I kinda copied Drac's display racks for my belts. I've been using extended carpenter sawhorses for my belts at the flea market, but Drac's display looked so good, I had to try my hand at it. What a difference in display! 6 2x4s, and 2 pegboards later, here's what I got so far. I've got to add some closing latches, handles, wheels, lights, and other ideas, but with a couple of these I can display a lot of belts. And it looks a lot better.

Thanks an awful lot for the idea Drac!

[UKRay]

That really looks good RDB - I'm still working on mine!

It will make stuff a lot easier to move around too. Shorter set up times mean you can stay abed just that little bit longer... LOL!

Thanks for the tip Gary - I'll check those out.

Edited September 12, 2008 by UKRay

[Daggrim]

Back on the subject of credit cards. I'm a fairly small operation...weekend renfaires, maybe 8 weekends/year, but I consider the ability to process cards as essential. I plan to grow, so getting this in at the beginning was a good idea.

Why go thru all the work of making product, making displays, getting juried in, driving, camping, and setting up, if you turn away sales? I've seen neighboring merchants loose out on hundred of dollars.

Is it a hassle setting it up? Just a little, but well worth it. In 4 years now, I've had zero problems with the account I have with Wells Fargo.

BIGGIE: Crafters can get a Seasonal Account, where you can put the card processing ability into suspended animation until you use it again. So, I deactivate it for six months during my off season. Regular monthly fee is $30. Inactive fee is $5. Saves me $150.

Daggrim

[Daggrim]

I'm going to try to include some pictures of my various booth setups. Not sure if I have this figured out, so .

Dag

[Daggrim]

Okay, that worked. But here's one I missed. Some shots are a rented building, one is my tent. No detailed pics, but you can see how I strive for a rich, unified look.

Dag

[hivemind]

Those pegboard display cases that close up are slick. If they were mine, I think I'd just add four eyebolts on each half so that I could stretch two bungee cords over the belts in either half and hold them in place during transport.

For credit cards, another option is a laptop, wireless internet card and PayPal. PayPal takes a percentage, and there's a couple more hoops to jump through, but there's no setup fee or monthly charge. The wireless internet card is going to hit you for probably $40-$60 a month, depending on your usage, but up where I live in Central NY, the coverage is fine and, while it's not cable or DSL, it's always several times faster than dial-up. If you don't have a laptop, you can usually snag one on eBay for a couple hundred used. It really doesn't need to do anything but internet and email. An old Pentium 3 or Pentium M laptop with 256 or 512 MB RAM would be fine for this type of use.

Obviously this is more accessible if you already have a laptop, but if the monthly fees on a merchant account or the lease on a credit card machine are making you balk, it's a workable option. Plus, when business is slow you can watch porn read the forums here!

Edited September 18, 2008 by hivemind

[Drac]

I've tried using bungee cords (both the regular ones and the web type ones) to hold me goodies in place, and stuff still would fall off hooks during flat transport. that's why I decided to go ahead and use the 2" pink insulation foam covered with eggcrate crate foam on both sides. nothing gets out of place now during transport. btw, building them out of 1x4's with metal shelf brackets makes the cases a little lighter and I haven't had any probs with sturdiness out of mine.

[RunningRoan]

I am a mobile/online retailer who only dabbles in leatherwork, so my approach may be slightly different, but I think I can offer some helpful insight. This is going to be a book!

When I started out, I used gridwall to build my booth. I found this was the best option for me, as I could change the layout of the booth as needed depending on the size of the space I had and the type and amount of inventory I had. I liked the option of getting things up off the tables and in plain sight of customers. There are lots of display accessories available for gridwall...pegs, hooks, bars, waterfalls, shelves, baskets, etc. That makes it easy to neatly display lots of different types of merchandise. My FAVORITE display option is a creation of my own: I needed an attractive and non-permanent way to display single-ear headstalls so they could be viewed from the side, where all the pretty tooling and hardware is easily visible. I got ahold of some decent caliper fir branches that were pretty straight, cut them into 2' long sections (as wide as one sheet of gridwall), de-barked them, sanded them down so they were smooth, and drilled a hole at each end that would accept a gridwall peg. In very little time, I had created an inexpensive, rustic-looking display bar on which to hang my single-ear headstalls. That was years ago and I still use the same bars now.

When I first started, I didn't have a lot of inventory so the booth looked pretty sparse. I noticed a fair number of folks just glanced as they walked past. I know what they were thinking..."Doesn't look like there's much to choose from in there". As I built my inventory, I totally abandoned the "minimalist merchandising" method and went for the "stuff this booth full" method. I crammed in a lot of product, but still kept things organized and neatly displayed. No huge piles of stuff that customers had to dig through. Because of a wide selection of things, I had more people walking in and more people finding items they couldn't live without.

To make the booth more welcoming and prevent theft, I set up the gridwall in a U-shape, allowing only one entrance/exit. I called it "crowd control". It also allowed room for people to mill around inside without feeling trapped. I put my checkout area where I had a clear view of the whole booth, usually near the entrance/exit. It's very important to greet each and every customer. I usually just do a simple "hi there" and leave them alone. I don't want to be a clingy used car salesman, but I want to acknowledge the customer. I've read many articles that say acknowledging customers helps prevent theft because they know you see them!

These days, I sell out of my vendor trailer 99% of the time. The set up and tear down of the gridwall got to be too time/labor intensive. I travel alone so I needed something I could handle by myself. I have a 24' fully enclosed trailer with a ramp on the back. The inside of the trailer is setup as a store with gridwall hung on the walls to display my stuff. Most of the inventory stays on the walls while the trailer goes down the road, there are only a few things that I have to take down. The gridwall makes it easy to remerchandise to keep things looking fresh. It was an investment to buy the trailer and set it up, but I go alot and can make enough events to justify it.

To keep track of sales, I enter all my inventory into Quickbooks. When I get merchandise in (or finish making something) I put a tag on it. I had custom hang tags printed with my store name and web address on the top part of the tags and a perforated section at the bottom where I could write the item number and price. When a customer buys a product, I just rip off the perforated section of the tag and put it into my cash box, jar, envelope, etc. The customer goes home with my store name and website on the product they bought...and I go home with the item number and price of each item I sold at the event. If you don't want to spend the money on custom tags, you can buy boxes of plain or generic tags with perforations. When you enter your sales into Quickbooks, you can check your inventory report to easily see what you have left.

I originally did not accept credit cards and I KNOW it hurt my sales. I wasn't selling enough stuff to warrant a merchant account at my local bank. I already had a PayPal business account to process my eBay sales. I signed up for Virtual Terminal through PayPal so I could process credit cards from events and phone orders. Virtual Terminal is a page on the PayPal website were you manually type in credit card numbers, exp dates, amounts, etc to process sales. This service costs $30.00 per month plus a percentage of each sale. I did not have a laptop or a wireless card, so I used a 2-part sales book (with a simple address label with my business name and contact info stuck on the customer's copy) to write down the customer's name and what they bought, as well as their credit card info and phone number on my copy only. Then I took my copies home to process them after the event. It was a good solution at the time, but risky. I usually had to call a few customers after every event because I couldn't get their card to go through. Luckily, I never got burned. All my customers returned my calls and we got the issues resolved. But I knew it was only a matter of time! Finally this year, I upgraded to a credit card machine and an account at my local bank. It seemed expensive by comparison at first, but the fees per transaction are quite a bit lower than PayPal's fees. And the security of authorizing cards and capturing the money on the spot before the product leaves is definitely nice! Plus, I have a fancy credit card machine that looks very professional and helps customers feel secure. And no more hours spent plugging credit card numbers into PayPal after an event!

Whew! Thanks and congratulations to all who read my novel!