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How to have a good craft show

Cat Rocketship — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:45:32 +0000

Market Day opens this Saturday, so I have a scant two days to prepare my booth. These are my thoughts on the stages of craft show set up.

Preparing a product

You've already gotten into a craft show so you have some semblance of a product line, but the pre-show period is a really good time to try to look at your stock with fresh eyes. Get in the headspace of a shopper passing your booth. What will they think they are looking at when they come upon you? What part of your booth will catch their eye? What will make them want to get a closer look?

This is also a good time to:

make signs
cull stragglers from your product line (one painting from a very long-past series that sticks out like a sore thumb? A couple designs from last year? Maybe it's time for a CLEARANCE!)
price items

Catching a passing shopper

So you're going to be in a room full of other crafters' booths. You are going to have to convince a customer to come your way. They should be able to see you from far away -- a large sign, a tall display, or a colorful set up will help with that. Once you have them hooked, you have to reel them in. As they get closer, they should start being able to read smaller signs or recognize something interesting that convinces them to step in the last few feet.

When a shopper is standing in front of your booth, she has definitely become your business. But what do you do? This is a stranger, who may want to buy your things but also may wantt o be left alone and anyway she probably doesn't like your stuff so ugh

Well, there are lots of ways to handle a shopper standing at your booth. Try to remember that you are there to sell your wares, and that she is there to shop. It is socially acceptable for you to make an attempt to convince her to conduct business with you. Say hi to her, as if you are in a very tiny shop and she just walked through your door. Say, "Let me know if you have any questions." or share a fact about your work ("These are made of real leather!") or offer a compliment ("Your head wrap is a lovely shade of green.") or encourage her to sign up for your mailing list or take a freebie.

Making the sale

Be prepared for this. Have change, bags, wrapping paper, pens -- anything you think is necessary. If you have set up a way to accept credit cards (like Square) be sure you are logged in and understand how the program works.

The Home Stretch

Okay, so hopefully you've made sales, but you are not done just because you got rid of some product. Now you have to wrap up loose ends.

Be prepared to pack up. Presumeably you are because you had to pack to get to the show, but...I have seen some booth dissassemblies that stretched into three hours! So I thought it worth mentioning.

Log your sales in your accounting books and inventories. Remove sold items from your Etsy shop. Add collected emails to your mailing list.

Just a little prep goes a long way in getting ready for a craft show. For me, the most important step is completely mental: stepping into a public persona. Remembering that I am "at work" helps me immensely in keeping up the hustle all day long. Good luck!

Make. Market. Love. Market Day's video will get you going this morning.

Cat Rocketship — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:46:41 +0000

Thanks to Kathy Landin, who produced this video for us, start to finish. She is one of our favorite makers around.

Print your own Market Day flyers

Cat Rocketship — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:22:01 +0000

They are super handy for handing out to friends when you talk about Market Day. There are seven different designs within each file.

8.5x11

8.5x14 (legal paper)

I am sorry I set them up sideways please forgive me ^_^

Now hear this: We made 7 new Market Day posters!

Cat Rocketship — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:35:00 +0000

Just in! We picked up seven new posters to promote this month's event. Help out Market Day by sending me an email (catrocketship@gmail.com), picking up a coupla posters to hang in your church or school or grocery or wherever.

You can also click on each of these posters for a very large, printable file. Enjoy!

10 ways to stay happy as an entrepreneur

Cat Rocketship — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:50:06 +0000

Entrepreneurship is an awesome profession. It is thrilling to invent stuff, innovate on old ideas, to reach an audience, to shape the future, to work with people you love, and to fuel economic growth. It can also be frustrating, demanding, all-consuming and taking a toll on your ability to be happy. Find balance in your life by enjoying what works and paying attention to bad signals. That way you will be able to be successful and find happiness.

Get decadent: This month Decadence Style is at Market Day

Cat Rocketship — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:00:45 +0000

And I drew a poster highlighting them.

Click on the image for a full-size (print size!) image

Incedentally, all our posters are hitting the town on Friday. Market Day is coming, friends!

Four helpful product pricing exercises

Cat Rocketship — Thu, 02 May 2013 05:23:03 +0000

Pricing is difficult, and the only thing that makes it suck less is that pricing is difficult for everybody. If someone out there exists who finds setting prices on her work a pleasant, easy, or fun experience, I haven't met her. I've also never met someone who is 100% sure of their pricing strategy all of the time.

But here are a few things to try. Go through each of these practices and see if it changes how you set the retail cost of your goods.

How much is it worth to you? You're making stuff, so your job is to conceptualize, design, and produce a something cool. BUT not only that, you are also the marketer, bookkeeper, and customer service manager.

That's a lot of work, so you'd better be sure you are making good dough.

Check out the competition. Identify people who make something similar to your goods. Pick a trait, any trait: subject matter, materials, medium -- compare them all and imagine they're listing your goods. How would they price your piece?

Do the math. How much would you like to make in sales each year? Got a number? Okay! Now compute how many pieces you can make a month, and divide your gross annual sales number by that figure. If that doesn't add up to a number you like, it's time to give some thought to a new price structure.

Create tiers. It is often helpful to think in terms of price levels -- low, middle, and high. There are pros and cons to using this price structure, but applying a pricing structure to your product line can definitely help you make sense of what the market might bear.

I'll keep thinking about pricing, and talking about it at events like AHEM tonight's Business Time, 8 PM at Smokey Row!

How to use analytics with your Etsy shop or craft blog

Cat Rocketship — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:01:16 +0000

Everyone wants to know how many people are viewing their stuff online. That number alone can be a helpful metric in measuring how your business is doing and if your promotional efforts are working at all. Plus, there's a lot more analytics can tell you about your site than just "how many people visited"? You can learn stuff like how people are finding you, what words they use to search for your product, and if someone else is posting links about you.

So start by installing Google Analytics on your site. Here are instructions for your Etsy shop. You will find similarly easy instructions by Googling analytics and whatever blogging platform you use (so "how to use google analytics with Wordpress", for example).

But what do you DO with the numbers you collect? How are they useful? Here are a couple ways you can use Google Analytics as metrics for your indie business.

Use your numbers to:

See which pages people are leaving from. Usually when you view your site's Exit Pages (Content -> Site Content -> Exit Pages) you will find at least one area you can improve in order to keep readers on your site longer. You can see here that a goodly number of people leave my blog from its landing page, about half as many leave while they're reading my blog's first page, and some leave after having seen what art I have for sale. This is all super useful information: my blog's landing page is still more than confusing than it needs to be, clearly. My blog is doing fine. And maybe I should be working on adding more pieces to my "For Sale" page -- because a lot of people are interested, but they're not finding what they want to buy there.
Check on your search engine referrals. Look under Traffic Sources -> Sources -> Search -> Organic) See if they match you and your content. If many of your top ten search queries are not related to you or content you're hoping to share ("daughters of satan watch"?) then that is a good clue that you should write more using words you want your customers and readers to find you with. It is ALWAYS smart to make your name and your shop name your highest search result, so make sure they are in your page titles.
Establish a baseline. It is useful to know, simply, how many people you can expect any given week or month. That way when you start a new marketing campaign or hand out a stack of Moo Cards at a show, you can see the results (or lack thereof) in your analytics. So go take a look at Audience ->Overview and play around with the inputs until you are sure you understand how many hits you get -- and then set a goal on how to increase it!

Repeat at least once a month. Get comfortable with the software and find ways to use its (free!) information to your advantage. In no time you will be an analytics wizard.

How to schedule your life and maximize creative output

Cat Rocketship — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:00:13 +0000

I know "schedule" and "creativity" don't sound like they go together -- but they do. Which is why I love this quickie personal how-to on Fast Company this week.

I wondered:

How do I balance client service with working on my own ideas?

How do I avoid interruptions that mess with my creative flow?

How do I stop putting off the stuff I hate but still have to do?

In my first attempt, I mapped out my day hour by hour, squeezing in all the elements of what I defined as an "ideal day." After a few weeks, I ended up feeling like a robot and the predictability was anything but inspiring.

That's when I decided to zoom out and think more about the categories of an ideal day and how I can batch my time to be most effective.

My problem became more clear: How do I make sure I'm getting stuff done, taking care of myself, making time from for play, and actively pushing myself outside my comfort zone?

That's when I developed a framework called "Work, Play, Fit, Push." Hanging from my wall, it looks like:

This is cool. I have found scheduling to be very useful too, as well as a weekly review of my upcoming goals. I like everything to be digital, so I use a free service called Trello to drag and drop priorities.

I schedule in everything, and I try to attach an end time to at least the two upcoming items. It helps IMMENSELY.

Anyone else? How do you be your own better boss and keep yourself on task?

How to know what to tweet. Or Facebook. Or blog.

Cat Rocketship — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:06:59 +0000

If you've thought about blogging or tweeting or social media-ing, you've wondered, "But what will I say?" I hear that question every time I talk online presence, and it makes complete sense. So I thought about all those askers when I read this Forbes article last week: Personal Branding Is A Leadership Requirement, Not a Self-Promotion Campaign. Author Glen Llopis helps answer that question by reframing the issue.

Personal branding, much like social media, is about making a full-time commitment to the journey of defining yourself as a leader and how this will shape the manner in which you will serve others.

And you, little creative padawan, are going to be a leader. Fuck -- I don't know who is reading! You could **already** be leading a whole army! Anyway, if this

Your personal brand should represent the value you are able to consistently deliver to those whom you are serving. This doesn’t mean self-promotion – that you should be creating awareness for your brand by showcasing your achievements and success stories.

or this

Managing your personal brand requires you to be a great role model, mentor, and / or a voice that others can depend upon.

wrinkles your brain a little, go read the whole piece on Forbes.