Home and Garden Show

I’m planning on doing my first booth at a Home and Garden show next month and I would like to get some advice from those that have experience?
Thanks,

Hey bud.

I believe Jason Evers just finished doing one.

See you in a few weeks.

Bring stuff to give away…coupons, discounts, at the very least candy! Freebies get people to stop that normally would just walk by.

Jason
I did a show 2 years in a row in Myrtle Beach. We did a free drawing for one residential wcing. Use the sign ups for mailing list. You want to put on a show to attract people. Set up a window frame and clean it with fanning or round the world or double handed. You want to amaze people to get them to your booth. Have you been to a IWCA trade show? Use ideas from that. One year in Atlanta Ettore had wfp set up inside with a gutter to catch the water and recycle it through the filter back to pole. This would reallyget people to your booth. How much is your booth?

we do a home show (same thing) every year. They are great, but make sure your booth can hang with the big dogs! Make it nice and proffessional. you will pay a decent chunk the first year to set it all up but every year from there its done. Yes give aways!!! big time, and it is a ice breaker…Would you like to enter to win a year of free window cleaning? Also it is nice to get a mailing list. Lots of cool pics are a must.

You should fly your best friend from AZ up to help, I hear flights are like $9, and that guy could really make the time fly… even late into the night.

Seriously, I once heard that since you’re going after housewives that you could do certain things to really connect with them. A great idea I once heard was to get a bunch of paint stirrers from Home Depot, get your logo put on them and then cut a notch out of the flat end to act as a pan-puller-outer for the oven. Since I feel like I’m making no sense, the point is that you make a tool to reach into the oven and hook onto the edge of the pan so it can easily be pulled to the edge of the oven where the cook can then easily grab it with oven mitts or a pot holder. If I still am not making sense call me, because I can’t describe this thing very well, come to find out.

Rachel also suggested having some rubber discs made to help open jars. We have one from General Dynamics, and we just put it on top of a stubborn jar top and it works as a grip to get it off. They have a crosshatched texture to them and they are about 1/32" thick, about 10" in diameter. You could have your contact info printed on them and say something to the effect of, making lives easier since 1990… or whatever…

Call me sometime, man.

You explained it fine, no worries. The rubber disc thing is a better idea though, imho. We had one for years we got at a homeshow… forgot about it til now, wish I still had it.

My tip:
Rest up. I’m about to do a 10 day show for another business venture, and they really suck the life out of you by the 6th day or so. Stock up on drinks, and offer them to your most promising leads if needbe.

As for the freebies, put them back where they aren’t difficult to get, but they aren’t easy to grab. Kids, and plenty of adults, just run up and down the aisles getting whatever is free. Put them back in the booth a bit and draw the people in.