This show really told us some things about the way our booth was set up. And mostly it came from talking to another artist. He showed us that our booth was set up to keep people out, keep them passing by. Because we worked from the center and they had to walk around the edges rather than coming IN. Ahhh.
We did get crowds of people at the front of the booth because I was demonstrating for much of the weekend. While this was a good thing, we did see that it blocked sidewalk traffic and alot of people passed the booth by because they couldn’t see what we had. Here’s Philip again, explaining a millefiore cane to a group of customers.
I was focusing on demonstrating the amazing nature of millefiore, and doing my best to show people how the canes were made that deocrated much of my beadwork. Bruce Baker calls this “edutainment”. Demonstrating has to be balanced with selling to the customer. If you can do both at the same time, then you have better chances of making a sale.
We realized that our tables were really cluttered. Too much to look at! So we thought we really needed another revolution. And it came as inspiration from another artist, Jenny Patterson. I’d helped Jenny with her booth in Chicago a couple of times, and Jenny’s setup had intrigued me.
Jenny and Bruce have an amazing business, Quilted In Clay. This picture was taken while I was helping to do cane demos in April. After the Charleston show in May, I’d called Jenny to see if she would mind if I used bifold doors in my booth, too. She laughed and said to go ahead, because she’d taken the idea from someone else’s booth she’d seen once. So we went to a home improvement store and bought 8 bifold doors.
Again we were in a hurry to change the booth, because the biggest show of the year was right around the corner: The Bead & Button show!
