The Preparation
In our previous post, we talked about the planning phase of doing a show as large as Make-It. While there are many challenges to consider, when your mind is put to it, you are able to come up with the best solutions for your situation. A few challenges we had were the following: This would be the first time a vendor like us attends the Make It Show--Will it be profitable? Will there be interest from the shoppers in what we have to offer? Will there be too much "other" competition from jewelry, clothing, body care sellers that will take away the attention from our potential customers for henna? Will the size and space of our booth be enough for what we need? How are we going to show off our henna work to the hundreds of people walking by without putting up huge signage or playing loud music? Are shoppers at this event looking to purchase henna? Will we have enough attention from the shoppers to at least educate them on safe henna and the harmful effects of black henna?
Once
some of the questions you have are resolved, it's time to go ahead with
the application of the show, (hopefully get accepted), and then proceed
to preparing for the show.
One
of our goals for this indoor gift and crafts show was to make sure that
we had a beautiful set up that would attract attention from far away.
With 140 vendors, it's so easy for a customer to just keep on walking
without taking a minute to look at your booth space. There were vendors
close to us who had bright and colorful displays and packaging, and
other vendors who had a much bigger space. Some vendors were at the
corner of the aisle, while other vendors had display shelving that was
breathtaking itself!
So,
we had to do something pretty amazing in order to keep a potential
customer's attention. With our new branded packaging, we wanted to give
people the feel for traditional henna without going away from our brand
colours and without getting too "busy" with our backgrounds.
One
of our preparations was to create a beautiful backdrop that would
scream henna, but would still be beautiful and clean. We did this by
hand painting a large canvas that was already primed.
We
then hung a disco ball in front of our set up to flash the bright
colors onto the black and white canvas. This got everyone's attention,
gave our muted and neutral booth some color and kept things minimalist
at the same time. We also had an iPad running a slideshow of henna
work. This kept our henna booth interesting for the passerby, and kept
things different without having to move anything around
We
hope you are able to seek inspiration from our booth set up. If you
do, please be sure to give us some credit and to also share with us!
When you share our company, blog posts, and products, we are able to
continue providing you with FREE content, ideas, design books and keep
our prices low.
Happy Henna-ing!