The very first craft show I sold at was in a small community league hall with less than 20 vendors. Craft fairs were fairly new and indie at that time. Although people showed up, it wasn’t exactly a buzzing scene. So it made my lack of conversation/selling skills even more apparent and awkward.   When an event is buzzing: people are coming and going, squeezing by each other to get a look at a table, having conversations around you, etc. a vendor’s silence may go unnoticed.   But when you can hear a pin drop in a venue, it feels extra awkward for you and the shopper if you quietly watch them browse your table.   If you’re underestimating the power of conversation when it comes to craft show sales, have..

I have a confession…   I love reading YELP and GOOGLE reviews. Especially the bad ones. I’m not really sure why. I’ll spend several minutes scrolling through strangers’ opinions of a business, even if I never plan on being a customer of theirs. At the risk of sounding like an online lurker, let’s say it’s for the sake of research ;)   I do like knowing what throws a customer’s experience off enough that they’ll take the time to go online, give a business one star and write a bad review.   The reason I bring this up is because through my online lurking research, I’ve noticed that so many bad reviews are more about the experience and less about the product or outcome of a provided servic..

Most of my local wholesale (and consignment) accounts stemmed from craft shows. Local store owners were shopping events I was selling at and asked about carrying my products.   I’ve also obtained wholesale accounts by cold calling stores, setting up meetings and bringing samples in, dropping in a store when I’m travelling and asking for contact information, mailing lookbooks, etc.   But having a storeowner approach me at a craft show is by far the easiest way…especially because cold calls make me break into a cold sweat.   If a storeowner has never approached you at a craft show, or if you have made retail connections at shows but would like to make more, check in on these 5 mistakes to be sure you'r..

If you’ve created holiday themed products, you have limited time to sell them. Which means you must work hard to market them. As you probably know, they aren’t just going to sell themselves.   (If you haven't created products for the holidays, here are 3 quick and easy steps to boost holiday sales with minimal effort)   This article is focusing on marketing channels and marketing methods…NOT sales channels.   You can create listings on Etsy, add new products to your website, sell at a craft show, etc. But those are your sales channels.   To get potential customers to your sales channels so you can sell your products, you must use marketing. Which requires making use of marketing channels an..

November and December are two of the busiest shopping months of the year, thanks to all the gift-giving opportunities. Many businesses earn the majority of their revenue in the last quarter of the year. Are you ready to make the most of holiday sales?   By the end of October, there’s not a lot of time to get fancy with sales and marketing…you really should be prepared by now and ready to focus on filling orders.   But not to worry, you can make the most of sales in the next two months with little effort.   It’s all about getting your shoppers into a gift-giving state of mind.   They'll not only think:   I love this necklace/candle/art/etc.   They'll also think: &n..

If you haven’t noticed by now, I love translating my riveting life experiences (buying an outhouse and eating blizzards for dessert) into business lessons.   This article is yet another lesson taken from the exciting pages of my life, this time when I was bathing suit shopping.   Who wants to try on bathing suits, right?   Especially after you’ve just finished a big dinner and a pint of beer.   I’m sharing why I was persuaded to try on, and buy, an expensive bathing suit and explaining what I call the bathing suit sales technique.     My husband and I recently went to the mall to get my laptop fixed, have dinner and grab some things for an upcoming trip of his, which req..

Whether or not your handmade business needs a business license to operate is a common question and a topic surrounded by a lot of confusion. And that’s because…   It depends.   But in most cases, your business does indeed require a business license or permit, no matter how small it is.   I’m going to shed a bit of light on the subject, as well as if you must register your handmade business and if it should have insurance.   If you’d like more in-depth answers and a guide to other laws you must follow as a handmade business, you can download LAWS FOR SELLING HANDMADE.     This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Made U..

My husband could eat a Dairy Queen blizzard almost every day for dessert (for those unfamiliar, it's soft-serve ice cream mixed with a flavor/ingredient of your choice). But he knows my metabolism isn’t quite as fast as his and I’ve (very kindly) suggested he not tempt me with a blizzard every night. So if he really wants DQ, he has to sell me on it…or in other words, ask for the sale.   However, there are plenty of times I’m craving a blizzard and don't need him to sell me on the idea, but rather, simply suggest it.   I can’t just come right out and say I want a blizzard…that would be silly ;)   I want him to pick up on my hints. That way I feel like a blizzard is meant to be and I’..

It kind of amazes me how many handmade businesses start before they know who they’re starting for. No shame. I didn’t know who my ideal customer was when I started my first handmade business.   However, that was over a decade ago and the Internet is much different today; rich with bloggers sharing free advice. Hi :)   I know that defining an ideal customer just isn’t clicking for many businesses. It’s evident by the questions there are surrounding ideal customer profiles (ICP), the number of people complaining that ICP’s are useless and the number of businesses creating products that are for everyone from a soccer mom to video gamer.   I don’t blame you if you’ve had trouble defining your idea..

It’s funny, the day I started this article, I was browsing the Internet in the evening, killing time, and came across a *GQ interview with Steve-O. In the interview he mentions a stunt he was getting ready to pull.   His plan was to sit in a lawn chair, on the roof of a wooden outhouse, and his friend was going to drive a car, at 50 mph, through the outhouse.   He stated, “I’ll fall a good eight feet to the ground, but the idea is we’ll film it in super slow-mo and the car crash will look super cool.”   The interviewer asked “why exactly?” he was doing this stunt and Steve-O said he was partnering with Lyft to promote their app and instead of simply telling his fans about Lyft, he thought..