My first sales event--Gore 4 Sale July 1, 2016 19:57 2 Comments

A week ago there was a garage sale/ car boot sale event in Gore. Since they also offered stall tables and they allowed vendors to sell anything they liked, I jumped at the opportunity to do my first in-person sales event! It cost $10 per table which was pretty affordable, and the event was from 10am to 3pm at the James Cumming Wing, which is just a stone's throw away from home. I really had no excuse to chicken out of this one!

This was how the hanakrafts stall looked like after setting up. We thought it might take us some time to set up but it actually took us less than half an hour. I suppose that's also because I had spent some time conceptualizing the whole set up at home, which I would highly recommend for any small biz owners running their first sales event. You will have less of a headache thinking of what to put where on the day itself!

Almost all the props and displays that I used were sourced from home, amazingly enough. The journals, notebook sets and long money envelopes were placed in these drawers, which were actually from our bedside tables! They were the perfect size and gave a nice homely feel to the display.

I also used woven baskets that were already in our home.This plastic card display was the only thing I bought, and I did so because I needed a neat way to display the cards. The cards were a hit on that day! I think people here still send handwritten greeting cards for special events, and haven't really gone down the whole e-card route, which is pretty sweet. I had some cute requests that will tell you some things about the demographics in Gore. "Do you have cards for a golden wedding anniversary/ a get well soon card/ a card for an old lady who just moved house?" =) Luckily I had some general cards for all occasions that did the trick!

Our customers really loved these Japanese stab-binding notebooks too! They were cooing over how 'clever' it was to stitch designs into the spines of the books. 

(By the way, you might notice that I offered discounted prices on almost all items that day! That was done on purpose so please don't be shocked that the prices indicated are cheaper than what you can find on my websites.)

Hubby took this photo of me while I was taking note of my inventory. I forgot to do that one essential thing at home! Luckily I remembered to do so before the event started.

You might be surprised to learn that even though hanakrafts has been running for a year now, this is only my first sales event. All this while hanakrafts has only been operating online, and that's partly because I hadn't yet mustered up the courage to sell in person. It makes me nervous! Upon reflection, though, I guess I have no reason to be anxious. Sales events give me the perfect opportunity to see how people respond to my products, which ones they gravitate towards and why, and whether my price points work. On that day, I was pleased to see that the customers were reacting very positively to all the products, and they were pretty impressed by the fact that everything was handmade. Also, even though they weren't quite sure what money envelopes were, they were very receptive when I started to explain their uses. They also loved the feel of the yuzen chiyogami origami paper, which was great! It feels good spreading the love of beautiful paper around =)