August 29, 2010

Fall Apple Festival in Pine Az

There is still have room for Food Vendors and Crafters in the Fall Apple Festival in Pine, AZ, 25-26 September 2010. This is going to be a fun event with music, vendors, story telling, greased poll climb, pie throwing and lots more. The website for info. and the vendor application is http://www.pinestrawberrybusinesscommunityaz.com/fallfestival.php or they can email or call directly for more information.

Hours are 10am - 4pm both Saturday and Sunday - it's a beautiful time in the mountains for a "country fair"!

Bobbie Tullo 928-978-0487 or bobbie.tullo@gmail.com

August 26, 2010

Never Underestimate the Power of Packaging

One of the biggest mistakes that crafters make when they first start selling their crafts (and a mistake many craft business veterans make) is to discount the impact that packaging and labeling have on sales success.

Inventive packaging that tells your story is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from the competition. And, it also helps you charge a premium for your crafts. So, take the time to develop a great packaging and labeling strategy. You'll be glad you did.

Packaging your products is like sharing a bit of your business with every purchaser. In the real world professional and creative packaging will help your business more than you can imagine.
This does not mean you have to look corporate or have expensive commercial style packaging. But creating every piece of your promotional material to co-ordinate and send a specific message about you and your business is of utmost importance.

Packaging your products with style and yet adding tiny subtleties to advertise your business is really important for your marketing scheme.

Let's look at how you tag your art. If you are using commercial stick on price tags that look like something used for a yard sale… well this could be the reason you're getting yard sale prices for your work.

How about some creative ideas that will be unique just for your product line? You could design one of a kind tags for each product. This could be tedious and a real time waster. Cute, but unnecessary.

How about heading out to your local office supply store and picking up a box of vanilla colored tie on shipping tags. The come with a nice clean string to use, but you could replace that with a ribbon, torn strips of cloth or raffia. These tags could be customized by you with a simple stamp and a handwritten description of the product.

Or… I just heard about a crafter who makes recycled art. Her tags are cut from cereal boxes. Cute!

You could use your business cards as tags, but
creating a business card size tag would be a better idea.

Each one should have your website, phone number and email address so that a customer could save the tag for future purchases. By designing a business card size tag you could add a small area at the bottom for the price. Your customer can then cut the price off when giving the item as a gift and your information is still attached.

Use a hole punch and use your creative juices to add a string or ribbon of some sort.

Are you using plain white plastic bags for your customer purchases?

Or… heaven forbid - grocery bags?

Have you ever purchased something at a great little boutique and marveled at the package you left with. Obviously, you love the product or your wouldn't have thrown down your hard earned pennies. But… the extras that they pile on is often amazing. Wrapping each item in tissue - bound with a cute seal with their logo - and everything put into a gift bag with more tissue and ribbons.

Then… when the gift receiver sees the bag… they know they are going to receive something very cool from their favorite gift shop, just by seeing the bag. It's like adding to the specialness of the event and the anticipation. This is an easy marketing tool to add to your toolbox.

Several years ago… I walked into a consignment gift shop. They sold country gifts when country was still cool.
  • The walls were covered with cranberry and beige gingham fabric.
  • Every window had a grapevine wreath with a cranberry gingham bow.
  • The business cards were bordered with cranberry gingham.
Do you see where they were going with a theme?

The packaging that they used was very simple. They used brown gift bags (like paper grocery bag paper) with handles.

Each item was wrapped in cranberry/beige gingham checked tissue. The bag was lined with the same tissue. The handles were tied with raffia and a business card was attached. This card was designed to be folded and used as a gift tag.

During their free time, they would sit and stamp the bags with a logo. They had the stamp specially designed locally so that it was inexpensive. So, even if the purchase was not for a gift, the purchaser would inevitably save the wrapping and use it for a gift some other time. Now the item they gave didn't actually come from that store, but the bag still had a small bit of the stores information right on the bag. Still more free advertising.

Spend an afternoon shopping for your "look". Then pick up a bin to hold your packaging supplies. Every craft show event will be even more fun now, because you are offering your customers an extra bit of love! You will be a hit!