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Marketplace Mondays Recap

Marketplace Mondays Recap

I am still in the midst of my house/floor redo and I’m missing all my furniture and applicances. The floor is complete but the company that is supposed to bring my stuff back has failed miserably. I almost forgot to post at all, so I thought I would do a recap post of Markeplace Mondays that I did over ten years ago. Hopefully, there will still be some useful information for people.

Introduction to Marketplace Mondays

Memorable Products

Cohesive Line

Diversify Products

Product Presentation

Hang Tags

Business Cards

Silent Sales People

Complementary Displays

Booth Displays

Approaching Sales Venues

Real Life Product Presentation

Approaching a Gallery Part Two

Pricing Part One

Pricing Part Two

Pricing Part Three

Finding Venues

Wholesale vs Retail

Wholesale Catalog

Selling on ETSY

One of a Kind Wholesale?

Production Calendar

Selling Wholesale and Retail

Finding Wholesale Shows

Artist Statement

Alternative Holiday Sales

 

Please remember that these posts were written in 2011-2012. Some of the information is probably out of date or maybe not even relevant. Hopefully, this will provide a list of  information and ideas that will improve the business/marketing side of your work. I owned a fine craft gallery for 20+ years so if you  have any specific questions, feel free to ask. The comment button is at the top of the page if you are not a subscriber or clicked over from a Facebook post.

Evaluate Your Marketing Plan

Evaluate Your Marketing Plan

In our last marketing blog, I used the Felt and Fiber Studio Forum as an example for determining marketing goals towards developing a marketing plan.  We discovered the who, what, why, where, how, and when for the plan creating a road map for our plan.

photo 3Now it is time to evaluate our plan and see if it meets our needs in terms of our goals. However, before we do that we need to take a look at what is working and what is not.

If your business is humming along just fine, you may wonder if this is really necessary.  There is no one right answer.  If you are satisfied with how much you’re selling and the way you are marketing and selling, it’s probably not necessary.  But what if you want to expand your market?  Make more money?  Diversify your offerings?

woman shopping

If you were running a restaurant and sales were down, customer complaints up, low tips for staff and few return customers, you’d have a good idea something wasn’t working.

However, in the internet world of marketing for arts and crafts, you don’t have the luxury of easy or obvious measurements of what is working.  At a craft or art fair, you can see your competition, compare pricing and quality first hand.  It’s easier to see how your products differ on the spot and ask customers what they think.

survey_clipartIn our Marketing Strategy for the Felt and Fiber Studio Forum the Driving Action for the goals of the Forum is participation.  So, in order to determine how we are doing since we can’t meet face to face, we are asking our members (and blog subscribers) to take a simple ten question Membership Survey so we can evaluate our plan.

What do we want to know?  We want to make sure we are serving the needs of our online community in a friendly, giving and nonjudgmental way.

Please use this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RX2XM9W

There will also be a link on the Forum under the Business section.  Please only fill out one survey.  We will not collect any personal information.

keyboard

I realize some of the people that read the blog, may not be Forum members.  So, if you would like to take the survey, please answer the questions applicable and put in the comment section of question number 8 that you are are a blog subscriber.  If you read the blog on a reader, please mention that in the same section.

dog and computerThe survey will be available for a week.  I will publish the results after I have collected and analyzed the data.

Please feel free to leave any comments here or on the forum.  We’re always interested to know how we are doing and what more we can do to help you.

Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time to participate!