If You Can't Get Them In, You Can't Get Them To Buy.

An exercise in booth design and a review of my booth choices this year. 

So I have been trying a lot to update the look of my craft show booth this year.

At the beginning of the year, my booth looked like this:

 

As you can tell, it was dark, and sometimes mis-matched with the displays. It worked ok, but it did not pull in customers the way I wanted. So I  guess in reality, it did not work for me.


I decided to try a new look by summer. I went bright.

This booth was just too bright. I had a lot of people stop just outside the booth and look in, but not so many came in. I guess the color caught their eye, but it was a little intimidating with all that brightness.

I loved the teal, but I think it was just too much.



So I stopped. I thought back to when I had the most sales. What was different with my booth then? How did it look? How did it feel?

Here is the how my booth originally looked when I was doing well in sales, before I started changing everything.

The booth was just two tables, and it looked sloppy. But things sold. Customers came in, they were not intimidated to walk in and look.

The brown stands were lopsided, and they tipped over very easily. (I really should have worked harder on being consistent when I made those displays.)






So upon reflecting on the look that seemed to work best, I created yet another booth look.
I wanted to add more table space, but still create the feel that there is a table between the customer and myself. (Over the years I have seen customers feel more comfortable when there was a table between us during a show. I suspect that they like to remain on the outside, because there is less of a mental commitment to buy something if it feels like you are still window shopping, rather than entering a store.)

So in order to create the feel of window shopping, and at the same time maximize the table space I can use, I have opted to create a Z-Table pattern like these.






Here is a peak at the new look I have chosen. I feel like it provides levels, a feeling of window shopping, a calm neutrality, and it maximizes my chances to display my work. (Forgive the picture quality, these were taken during a setup run in my house, notice my son's Lightening McQueen Couch in the photo; lol)

It looks much better put together at a show. Just wish I had bought the camera and got photos during my last show.





Notice the neutral beige for my tablecloths. This color is very underwhelming and blends away so your focus is on the displays and jewelry, which is as it should be.

The teal color is strategically placed to draw your eye into the black displays which pop against the brightness of the teal.



I have the Z-shaped table which increases the room I have to display objects, but it also creates a path for my customer to follow into the booth.

I have also placed my earring spinners on the back table. Earrings tend to be a big seller for me, so I placed them visibly on the back table so that a customer will see all of my work on the way to the earrings, rather than just staying on the earrings as tends to happen.


I am also placing a rummage box just in front of the spinners on the middle table for customers to sift through.

 Finally, right behind the front table, I have placed a glass top shadow box. I will be placing my expensive pieces in this. Hopefully it will have people oohing and awing.





Hope you enjoyed this tour of my booth, from old to new. The new look was fairly successful during my last show. There is another show this weekend, and I hope it does as well at that show.