Home show marketing?

[Dan Sawatzky]

As our business is changing from one solely doing large scale theme park type projects to more of a 'dimensional sign shop' taking on all sorts of interesting things - we are looking at ways to market our company, especially locally. The current economic conditions have dried up the big jobs in the short term or so it seems. While we still persue opportunities in the theme market we are also keeping out eyes open for other opportunities and smaller but still top end projects.

One of the possiblities is a local trade show billed as a 'home and garden show.' Janis & I have attended the show as spectators in past years, looking for ideas for our future house project. The show is fairly well attended locally, with an advertised visitor count of 15,000. The entrance fee is not too steep and I feel we could effectively put together a good looking display without too much effort. We certainly have lots of samples on hand and these would be supplimented by a little more focussed work. By the time the dust settles the total cost for the show and all related expenses would be about $1000.

We live in a relatively small community with limited posibilities in terms of marketing in this type of venue. The big trade shows with marketing directed at the tourism or hospitality industry are in the major city of Vancouver which is about 2 hours away.

We would display signs, sculptures, models, and drawings... all in the most creative way we could imagine to attract attention to what we do and hopefully engage people who pass.

We would be marketing our dimensional signage, primarily router work. Its our hope to reach high end households and small businesses/farms with the end result being orders for signs. As much as the possible orders our intent is to build goodwill and name recognition for the future. As we all know contacts made today can come back years from now in ways and with projects not even yet imagined.

My questions is...

Does anyone else do this type of show and in your opinion was the effort worth the result?

Still learning in Yarrow...

-grampa dan

[Mike Jackson]

Hi Dan,
Not long after we moved to Jackson Hole, we displayed at our local home show. We built a fairly nice display booth and actually won first place at the show for our booth. We only did it one year, mainly because we were very busy the next year. It is hard to say whether the booth caused us to be busy later in the year, or if we would have been busy regardless. I spent a few hundred dollars building our booth, along with a few days building it, then lost a Friday and Saturday actually at the show, and ended up storing the booth for years. We gave it to Noel Weber and he remodeled it for a show he was doing.

I am guessing you have already thought this thing through, so the question is probably more rhetorical than anything else! Since you have already gone to the show a few years in a row, you know what kind of vendors are showing, and what kind of people are attending. We go to ours now mainly to say hi to some of our friends and to get the free rulers, pens, bags and so forth. Some go there to learn about new insulation, building materials and hot tubs. There are usually enough businesses at the shows to expose your goods to at least that group, plus the walk-in visitors.

On balance, you have to try to understand how your product matches up with the bulk of the visitors. Proportionally, there might be more home owners and less business owners, so you'd be targeting your products to that group to let them know what you are now offering. You'd also have to figure out the direct costs, time to make samples and your booth, time away from the shop and then compare it with the expected return and the value of the exposure.

I don't know if we sold anything specific while AT the show, but I suspect we reaped the returns throughout the year and maybe years afterwards. The US is in a downturned economy right now, so investing in promotion might be a wise move for some.

If you do the show, let us know how it goes.

Mike Jackson

[Tony Segale]

howdy boys...

When I first was establishing my business presence, I attended a couple 'mini-trade shows' the local chamber of commerce used to host.
If nothing else, I made my self known. It took some time to prep, load, set-up, stand there and meet and greet, take down, haul back.

There is an annual Grape Festival where a biz can set up inside the pavilion for a four day weekend, but I've never wanted to tie up my time
for that duration.

A couple years ago, I entered a logo contest for a local 'Art on the Square", won, and was given a free booth for the two day weekend.
I cleaned up my old display, set up my gilding and calligraphy supplies, demo-d black lettering upside down, gilded a couple small pieces...
and it turned into one job.

It can be a lot of work for a few days exposure, but the right client might happen to pass, you just never know.

For the last two years, I opened my studio for a weekend event 'Artist's Open Studios Tour'. This is more rewarding.
You get a chance to really clean and organize, display your work, demonstrate your talents, and at the end of the day...
you close your door, BBQ a steak, kick your feet up and roll a good western. Heck, last year, I had the soundtracks playing during the tour.
I've just finished writing a grant application for this years open studios tour and taken the role of head organizer.

Either way, doing nuthin will get nuthin. I always believe...
if the risks are little, the rewards are little.

[joe cieslowski]

I've been doing these types of events as well as craft shows for close to 35 years and they have produced very well for me.
3 years ago I designed a "POP" type display that sets up in minutes and I show, literally, at garden centers, fence companys and this winter at a feed and grain store (a very UPSCALE feed and grain )



Here is my larger display that I set up for long shows.



It's worked very well for me. I often hear "I always wanted one of these"....and in the back of my mind I'm asking why they never walked into a sign shop for one?????? Go figure.

I call it "shakin the bushes".

Joe,