Show Specific Items

[ColoradoWayne]

Wondering who is doing what for what types of shows? I've only done two craft shows, and they were both Christmas related. I sold a few gift items like Welcome signs, several Merry Christmas wind chime type things and even got a couple custom name signs. This month I have a gun show and a sportsman show so I'm focused on things like Welcome signs with wild critters, a nice duck wall hanging, and maybe even a clock in the shape of a bullet? I'm now signed up for a car show and although there was one thread here from 3 years ago - I'm still wondering what works well there. I would imagine some very popular cars - unfinished Chevy Tri-5 - so they can paint them the color they want? Maybe some hot-rod welcome signs or garage type signs? Anyone have any suggestions? The car show is 800 miles from home so I can't run home to do or get anything - but would like to make a good presentation. I've attended this car show the past few years and really enjoy it, so this year I get to participate. Any suggestions on what you drag to different shows would be helpful to me and maybe some others just getting into this. And of course - THANK YOU to everyone for sharing the great artwork and advice - this board makes it possible for others to be successful.

[Biker]

You Sir have got some nice work there. Where did you get these degsines from. Would like to see some close up of the little cars. That would be nice to use as trophies. Have you made any trophies. My local tractor pulling club wants me to make some but I don't know where to start. You got some nice work there.

[ColoradoWayne]

Hey Biker - Thanks for the kind words. The overwhelming majority of the stuff I've cut I've picked up right from this website. Once you pay to join, the benefits FAR outweigh the cost. Tons of dxf files to download, lots of advice and help from others doing the same types of things. The thing is, when we get good enough that our work is worth sharing it is expected that we payback by sharing our art and knowledge. There are some other websites out there that do file sharing too. I've not done any trophies, but I know several of the folks on this site have - for a variety of events.

[conz35]

We just started hitting shows this year and have learned a lot in a short amount of time, we just go back from the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. Its hard to say what sells the best, We hit a lot of rodeos and western style gift shows. We always try to take a little bit for everyone. We dont call 9-1-1 is always popular, along with various welcome signs, key racks are great, napkin holders work well too, paper towel holders are good, coat racks, led signs, etc. The hard part is trying to figure out what price point to try to hit. We've learned that the $25-50 range seems to be best, but we still have $5 keychains for little impulse buys at the register, and we stock bigger size pieces that go for $200 and up. In Vegas about 20% of our business was custom orders. The important thing is to have a variety and fill the space. If nothing else you can show a piece off to give people an idea. That helped us get a lot of customs. Most the customs were simple designs tweaks too; (i.e.: deleting welcome and adding a name, or putting someones ranch name, etc.)
The other thing to take into consideration is the area/people you will be selling too. Is it a wealthy part of town? Is it a swamp meet where everyones looking for a deal? Whats the event? Theme? etc. These are all questions we consider when choosing quantities and price points during production.

Hope I helped and thanks to everyone on here for all your input this year, learned a ton!!!

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[ColoradoWayne]

Hey conz35 - Thanks for the information. Your booth looks great. Can you tell me more about the walls and how you hang your stuff on it. My pegboard just looks "cheap" and I think it hurts sales? Do you do vinyl cutting too? I thought I saw some vinyl added to a couple things?

[conz35]

ColoradeWayne,
We just bought the metal wall grid that is pretty much show standard for most shows. I dont know where your located but we bought are wall grid from http://www.storesupply.com I think they were like $21 for a 2x8 panel black panel. Then we bought 2" wall grid hooks from them.We also buy all our merchandise bags from them. Shipping might kill you a little bit but if you do it right and plan for the future you could just order everything at once and it would only be a one time shipping cost. Our first booth was a 10x10 but luckily I had purchased enough grid with the intentions of expanding to a 10x20. It was a good call too, bc after our first show we realized a 10x10 was just not enough space to market metal art efficiently. If you go with wall grid dont bother buying those little metal clamps that hook them together, there a waste of time and money, Honestly, every booth we've seen has just used zip ties to hold all the panels together, Typically will use 750-1000 of these zip ties every time we set up our booth. I probably use overkill bc i generally put 8-10on ea for hooking each panel together.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350722837209?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

We dont do any vinyl stuff. Perhaps your seeing our vinyl banner that says custom metal art?
We do use black vinyl as our backdrop for part of the booth. We also have a couple big hides we use, in my opinion what looks the best is the shade screen material lowes sales. (tan material).

The only other thing I would say is definately get some sort of lighting to shine on your pieces. Our first show we had nothing for light and sales were good but when we added track lights with led bulbs to our second show the metal art really popped! Especially on the candy powdercoat pieces. We ended up tripling our numbers. I would say some of that was the second was a better event/venue but some of it had to be our display. Here was our second show setup:

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Let me know if you have any other questions,
mike.

[Biker]

Wayne,

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm surprised you have never do trophies!!! Your truck looks great and so does your work. I'm going to became a full member. Maybe I will learn more how to do this kind of metal work.

Conz35,

Your setup is great too. I doubt I will ever get the time to do the shows like you guys do.

Any of you guys with trophies would be glad to see some.

[acourtjester]

Here is a post with different trophy's http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.p ... ock#p82864
Sometime when you are a little different you strike someone's fancy I think those that sell metal art march to a different drummer. You may contact clubs in you area to find out if they are looking for trophy for their genres.

[Biker]

Acourtjester,

Those looks nice. Very much something to think about. This pulling club I'm in would like anything I do. I have my kids in the bone stock pulling class.