It’s Show Time…Are You Ready?

by Elizabeth Sterling

It’s show time…are you ready?

A great way to make sure that you are prepared for a show is to develop a pre-show checklist. This generally takes experience and probably doing a few shows regretting what has been left behind before it is perfected. But I thought I would share our pre-show checklist and a couple of organizing tips in hopes that others might benefit without having to learn the hard way.

We have a small 3-drawer organizer that we use for all our sales materials and miscellany that we find we often need throughout the show. It contains the following:

• Business cards, postcards, brochures
• Pens, sharpies
• Calculator
• Price tags
• Stapler
• Scissors
• Receipt book
• Credit card machine and charger (We keep this in a separate waterproof container.)
• Portfolio
• Sunscreen
• Mints
• Tylenol
• Some emergency food (energy bar, crackers, etc.)
• Coins for change (we keep cash on us)

We have a tool organizer that is on wheels that we affectionately call Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins has everything but the kitchen sink in it that we need to clean or repair our furniture and jewelry boxes and general booth set-up supplies. Depending on your medium, what goes in the clean/repair/set-up box would be totally different obvisouly. Some of the items in our Mary Poppins are:

• Drill (Both battery operated and a hand drill because some show do not allow artists to use power tools due to union rules.)
• Nuts and bolts for our wall assembly
• Screws and picture/shelf hanging supplies
• Glass cleaner
• Furniture cleaner
• Zip-ties (We use these to deter vandal and thieves by “locking” the tent zippers to the gussets.)

We have a plastic tub with a lid that we use to hold all our packaging materials:

• Bags of different sizes
• Boxes
• Bubblewrap
• Tissue paper
• Extra business cards/postcards

Prepare for the worst when it comes to weather at an outdoor show. These are the general supplies we take along for outdoor show regardless of the weather forecast:

• Sunshade
• Chairs
• Change of clothes (or 2 if you take along a toddler like we do)
• Raincoat
• Lightweight jacket
• Cooler with water, food
• Battery operated fans (The brand O2 Cool makes a battery operated fan that works great for outdoor shows. We hang one in the top of the tent to circulate the air and keep one in back to keep us cool.)
• Tent with all its parts
• Rugs that fit the booth size (I’ve had to run out to get rugs when our rugs were smaller than the booth and the blue floor clashed with our booth display. Now we have dark brown outdoor rugs that will cover a 10 x15’ booth that we put under our bamboo rugs)
• Weights for the tent (We’ve seen a few disasters from people not weighting their tents down at shows. Use weights… it’s worth the trouble.)
• Cart

If the show is indoors or if it is an outdoor show that has electric and show hours run until dark, we take the following:

• Power strips
• Extension cords
• Lights

And to avoid the stress of traveling and check-in make sure you take along:

• Maps or GPS
• Hotel/Campground confirmation with the phone number
• Show packet
• Cell phone with charger

And of course, you need your product and display materials. We inevitably leave behind a prop or something we planned to sell because this is an ever evolving list of items.

If you do shows, what do you make sure you don’t leave home without?

Elizabeth Sterling and her husband John market their one-of a kind furniture and jewelry boxes at shows in the Northeast and Midwest, through their web site, and their etsy shop, so wabi sabi. Elizabeth shares her life and love of all things handmade, homemade, and homegrown in her blog so wabi sabi.

Elizabeth will be bringing you this series on marketing your craft business through shows, fairs, and markets for the next 2 Fridays! You can find the first installment in her craft show series here.