Tuesday Tip - Bead Show Planning

In a former life, long ago, in a far away place, I did a lot of project management. It seemed quite natural to me to approach my first bead show like a project. This is the less glamorous side of making ceramic beads. But shows cost money and time and a whole lot of energy. So it seemed wise to have a plan.

Somewhere along the line I read that a good show brings in 10 times your booth fee. What I actually take from that is that it’s good to have a financial goal for the show. That goal could be covering your booth fee and expenses, making xx amount of dollars, it’s up to you. Turning that around, you need to have the inventory to make your show worthwhile. So way back in January when I started planning, I made an excel worksheet and made a list of all the things I make, the price I sell them for, and just how much I would need to have to make my goal if I sold every piece I brought with me. Then I doubled this amount. It was a sobering amount of inventory.

Dress rehearsal. The lids of the containers became bead trays and

everything got to the show organized and sorted.

The next thing I did was look at my list and figure out how long it would take to make these pieces and how many kiln loads it would take to finish it all up. From there I drew up a week by week production schedule. Tedious? Yes. But by the time the show rolled around I had plenty of inventory and I was pretty much stress free. And, best of all I ended up with variety. If I didn’t make a list everything would be blue or green and I’d only have my favourite designs. No, I did not get everything on my list done.

Packed and ready to go!

One of the things I really wanted to do for this show was have the week before completely devoted to finishing up display, labeling, and packaging. I think it’s a very good idea not to be firing any kilns in that last week. Why do I think this? Well in the past, for my regular art market, I’ve been making up things right up to the last minute. I get to the market and I’m exhausted and grumpy. Grumpy generally does not make for great customer service. Leave that last week for fine tuning, resting and eating properly. You’ll go into that show happy and smiling!

This is just a little behind the scenes of how I approached getting ready for this show. If you search around the internet you’ll find a few lists of things you may need at the show, display ideas, and so forth. Heather over at Humble Beads has a lovely post on preparing for an Arts and Craft show. You can read about it here. Want some ideas for display? Check out the Jewelry and Bead Show Display Flickr group here.

Got any tips of your own? We’d love to hear them.