Vendor Event Tips You Should Know Before Your Next Pop-Up
Do you have your first event booked and need some helpful inspiration? Maybe you’re on your 10th event and just looking for ways to improve. Whether or not you’ve had experience, we’re here to help. This month’s blog is going to focus on tips for your first vendor event as well as some guidance on what to bring with you.
Prep Everything the Night Before
A very important tip that might seem obvious is to prep everything ahead of time. This way, you can ensure you aren’t forgetting to pack anything and if you do forget to pack something, you still have time to add it to your bag. You could even make your own checklist of everything you will need to bring so you can check it off as you go. We haven’t done this yet, but we definitely should.
Bring It If You Think You Might Need It
Our little bag of “just in case” supplies.
This one kind of goes without saying but it’s still important. There have been so many times where we were prepping for an event and weren’t sure if we should bring something with us or not. Things as simple as extra bags or a pair of scissors even. We have regretted not bringing whatever it was so many times that we always recommend just bringing it. It is better being safe than sorry. You won't always have extra room (trust us) but if you do, bring it just in case. We keep a tote bag with double-sided tape, tiny scissors, extra chargers, battery packs, s-hooks, binder clips, safety pins, regular writing pens, magnets, etc. inside of it because we never know what we're going to need or what might come in handy when you need to find a creative solutions in a pinch.
Bring A Second Person
Honestly, there is no way we could run our booth completely by ourselves 100% of the time. It’s just not feasible when it gets busy. We take turns between checking out the customers and packing up orders. It makes the checkout process much quicker and easier and we’re sure the customers appreciate that. Also you won’t be able to take a break and go shopping (or go to the bathroom) if you’re by yourself. If you have someone willing to help, utilize them.
Be Friendly
When you’re at a vendor event, lots of people will be walking by your booth. When people walk by, you have two options. You can politely engage them with a friendly “how are you?” , pay them a compliment, or ask them a question specific to your products, or you could just sit there and let them go by. For example, if you’re an author or an illustrator, you could ask that passerby if they enjoy reading the genre of your book. By making conversation you are capturing attention and while you have their attention, you can tell them about your products. You don’t want to just be sitting down the entire event, that doesn’t give a very inviting vibe. Make sure you and your space are both welcoming, people will be more interested in you and your products. Anyway, you are the commodity to your booth, not your art. Your art is not going to connect with someone as much as you, a genuine human being will. It's important for you to be the safe space.
Have Signage
The large banner in the photo is attached to our tablecloth at each event so people know exactly who we are.
When you walk into a booth, you should easily see who it belongs to. You shouldn’t have to walk around or ask to figure that out. Be loud and proud with your branding. Signs can be expensive, but vinyl banners and other great options can be found for relatively cheap and are for sure an investment worth making. In addition to signs, you should have other marketing materials such as business cards, product care cards, and any information that will help a consumer feel like they're making the right choice purchasing from you. We know from firsthand experience that people come over to our booth and interact with us all the time and even when they don't purchase anything from us, people will often times grab one of our business cards. Taking one of your business cards will allow them to check you out again and hopefully they'll even share your business with their friends and families. You should try to include your logo on as much of your packaging and marketing materials as you can to eliminate the guesswork and reiterate your branding to the consumer. You should be sick of your logo by the end of it.
Accept Multiple Forms of Payment
You wouldn’t want to be standing in line to checkout just to find out that somewhere didn't accept the form of payment you planned on using so don't put your customers through that struggle. You don't want to miss out on sales so try to accept multiple forms of payment. Having a clear display stating which payment methods you accept will save time and confusion.
We use Square point of sale and it’s a great system because we can track our inventory, manage our products, and take card payments with a card reader (we purchased our card reader separately.) However, you can get a Square card reader that plugs into your device for free from their website.
It is somewhat rare, but people do ask if we accept PayPal, Venmo, and Cashapp, and while we do not, it could be something you might be interested in so we decided to note it.
Also, if you are going to accept cash, make sure you have plenty of change! You are likely going to need it. Especially $5, $1s, and all the coins. We got a handy cash box with a lock that we use everywhere we go and would highly recommend you do the same so you’re not stuck using a bag like we were. It’s so much quicker and way more convenient.
Use Displays To Your Advantage
When drawing people over to your booth, you need to make sure your booth iss eye-catching. We’ll give you a few ways to make sure that happens.
You can see our products from a distance since we switched out displays for the upright shelves.
When planning your display, make sure to try to add height to your products. You want people to be able to see what you sell from afar so that they won't miss your products . For example, if you make and sell shirts getting a mannequin, or a mannequin torso, to display a shirt and having the rest of your shirts neatly folded into a crate below your mannequin would be a great way to display them. We used to have our stickers displayed on a wooden riser display before we realized no one could really see our star-sellers unless they were directly on top of our displays looking down on them. We switched to vertical display stands and never looked back. We encourage you to do the same and go vertical as often as you can when displaying your products.
Make sure your booth has a nice flow to it so people can shop in an organized fashion. It doesn’t matter how small the space it, flow is important.
By creating a large display in the back of your booth, you are creating a more visually appealing set up that will draw more people in to shop.
A fun idea we’re trying to start implementing is a small space where people can come take pictures. We have a small, wavy mirror with text that says “You look beautiful” on it that we’re going to test out over the next few months before possibly going larger scale with idea of a “photo op” at our booth.
Make Sure Everything is Clearly Priced and Labeled
Depending on the number of people at an event, you could get pretty busy. There are times when we have 5-10 sales back-to-back and our booth can get pretty crowded. You want people to be able to find every answer they need without having to stop your groove and ask. You wouldn’t want someone to have to stand there and wait on you to be ready so be sure to include pricing, materials, care instructions, and anything else relevant to your business in a way that is clear and visible to your audience. Whether or not you have a price gun or you use a chalkboard sign you got from Dollar Tree, make sure your prices are known.
Bring Snacks and Water
Vendor events can last for hours, even sometimes all day and you might not be able to leave your booth to grab food. We always have a bag of protein-filled snacks (and of course some other not-so-good-for-you snacks) and water pretty much wherever we go so we encourage you to do the same. Bring extra water if your event is going to be outside. It’s important to stay properly fueled and hydrated.
Take Each Event As A Learning Experience
It’s easy to set the bar too high for yourself when you’re excited about something and while goals are great, you have to remember not to let yourself get too down. If you don’t hit your target, it's okay! Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. Sometimes the weather is less than ideal and that will make it so not many people will come to an event. Other times a product you thought would sell just doesn’t. Look back and figure out ways you can improve with each event. Look at what sold, what didn't sell, what techniques did and did not work in promoting an event, and always make a list of things you wish you had brought with you. We like to reflect after each event and figure out what we could do to make our displays look better and any other ways we could improve our space to attract people to us.
We hope you found this blog helpful and were able to take some of these tips and implement them. If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them! Just reach out and we’ll be happy to help!
Also as a special thank you for reading this blog, take 10% off your next order with promo code: “BLOG10”!