Being a market vendor can be a tricky proposition, one that requires you to wear many hats. Not only do you have to be a crafter, making whatever it is that you do, but you also need to fill out some other roles, such as:
Market Researcher
Marketing guru
Web site manager/developer
Blogger (not required, but it can help)
Book keeper
Public relations specialist
Salesperson
Personal assistant (to yourself)
You may have a spouse or someone else who helps you out with a few of these things (which we'll try to get into later in more detail) but when you're just starting out, odds are that you won't be paying a professional to do any of these things for you. This means a pretty steep learning curve on most of these things.
Ultimately your goal (or at least one of them) is to successfully market your product to the point where you can run your own full time business. This is the dream for many and the reality for a very select few. Today we're not going to get into how to become wildly successful, but we do want to look at one very important aspect of being a successful market vendor.
In the last post I tried to emphasize the importance of patience, today I want to talk about paying attention.
Most of us work (or have worked) in jobs where you only had to pay attention to your own specific duties: do what you're supposed to and leave the decision making up to management. This is going to be a bit different.
You're going to have to feel out the markets that you operate in and that's going to mean paying attention to a lot of different things.
What to Sell
Pay attention to your customers. Get feedback on your products: do they often pick something up and then put it back down when they find out the price? Maybe you need to consider dropping the cost a bit. Do they compliment you on your work generally but not seem interested in any particular items? Maybe they appreciate what you've done but it either isn't to their taste or you don't have anything that they want (or have space for). If you take custom orders it may be a good idea to make an extra one to see if other people might like the same thing. Often one person has a great idea for something that they'd like and it turns out that others have the same opinion.
What to Charge
Pay attention to your customers. Not to sound trite, but listen to what they have to say, and not just about your products and prices. Find out where they're from (when it seems appropriate). Are they locals or are they from out of town? Tourists or just passing through? Do they stop by often or is this their first time?
I live in a rural area and sell at a local, small town farmer's market through most of the year (when not engaged elsewhere). Locals often are not willing to pay the same price that people from the city are, and many of those have cottages in the area and are regulars at the market. What seems high to a local may seem like a steal to a tourist. Find out who you're trying to sell to and then price appropriately.
This is not a thorough discussion on pricing, just one aspect. Obviously if something costs $10 in materials and takes 3 hours to make, you can't realistically sell it for $12 (unless it's a promotional product, but we're dealing with basic circumstances here). This might mean that it's not worth your time to make that item, or at least that it's not worth making it for that particular venue. Which brings us to...
Where to Sell
Regular weekly (or even daily) markets such as farmer's markets, can be great, but they're certainly not the only place you can go. Craft shows, fundraising sales, fairs, festivals, consignment stores, even museums, and more can all be viable places to hawk your wares. Not every venue will necessarily be appropriate for your products, but it seldom hurts to look into it.
Personally, I find that a mix of venues in different locales alongside a regular market venue make for a good mix. During the warmer months I'm at the farmers market fairly regularly, unless there's an alternate venue where I think I can make more profit than I would at the market. How do I know how well a particular venue will go? I don't. Every time you go out to sell your goods you are taking a risk. We won't take time for a long discussion here, but there some good rules of thumb to follow.
Talk to other vendors. Not every vendor is as new as you are, and many of them have been to at least one really great show that they try to get into every year. If someone raves about it, it might be worth a peek.
Get feedback from people on special events. This might mean talking to people, reading the newspaper, watching the news or listening to it. They won't tell you how the vendors did, but they might give you an idea of how many people attended. If you normally see 150 people over 6-8 hours at your local farmers market and there's a venue that attracted 20, 000 people last year, it might be worth your time.
How to Sell
Not to sound repetitive or anything, but pay attention to your customers. If you try a line or a pitch with a particular item (let's call it a spiel), and it doesn't seem to be working, try another approach. If you have a display set up in such a way that people seem to be ignoring certain items, you may want to revise your setup. Remember, in the end it doesn't matter how good you think it looks. What matters is what your customers think
We've already covered a lot but here's a couple of quick tips to help you keep track of these things:
1. Take notes. Pen and paper or smartphone, doesn't matter, just write down the things that you notice.
2. Keep track of sales. How many have you made and how many have you sold? Make sure you're making the things that are selling the best.
3. Keep track of venues. If a show was really terrible for you and the organisers thought it was great, you may not want to go back. Keep in mind things like the weather on the day of the show, the time of year, etc. Remember to write down info on other venues that you hear about that sound promising.
That's it for now. Now go make some stuff and enjoy the markets!
No comments:
Post a Comment