As I reported last time, I was looking into having a booth at a cool new consignment shop/boutique. Well, I did look into it...and I'm doing it! I think I must have a screw loose to be trying something like this NOW of all times though! I have a child who will be graduating from high school in 5 days and a middle schooler who has a week and a half left of school, and what that means is that the next week is going to be CRAZY busy. Not to mention I have a custom graduation exploding box order that I need to finish up, my house is a disaster and we will of course be having people over next weekend for graduation festivities for my son, and that's just in addition to the usual business of life. So, yes, just what I needed- MORE to do! Well, you know what they say about when opportunity knocks. It had to be now, because the shop starts their contracts on the first of the month, and that's today. I spent a couple of hours late yesterday afternoon setting up the bulk of my booth, and am going back today to finish up. Here's what I've got so far:
It's a small booth- only 3' wide by 2' deep, but lots of height, so I built up! I had my wonderful hubby build me a L-shaped lattice wall, which we painted white with a soft lavender trim. I went out scouring thrift stores and garage sales for fixtures, and managed to find a collapsible 3-shelf bookshelf and tall sofa table. The sofa table is on top of the bookshelf, and then I have a small 2-shelf unit in between the two. My spinning card rack fits just barely between my and Megan's space- that is hers to the left. The lattice is great- it defines the space, and allows me to hang things from it. I got a package of nice brushed metal shower curtain hooks, and they hook through the lattice so that things can hang from them. Right now I've got some purses- the owner told us that since it is a shop that sells resale clothing and accessories, we can add those things to our booths as well as our own products. I went through my closet and found some purses and shoes, and also found a few purses at the garage sales I visited, and hopefully that will help to supplement my sales and help with my start-up costs. That lattice...it was not cheap, and all I can say is that I really hope this works out!
I have a lot of work yet to do- today I will be working on hanging things on the lattice on the window side. The window faces a very busy downtown street so there is lots of traffic there, so I want to maximize that space. It's a little hard to get back in there, so it should be interesting! The shop is not open for business today, so thankfully I don't have to worry about being in the way of customers, or vice versa. I also need to work on adding some sentiments to the outside of some of the cards. I have always left them free of sentiments for the most part, so that buyers on Etsy can choose whatever sentiment they want to be added. However, I think for a shop like this, people are more apt to buy if it has a sentiment on it. I unfortunately did not have time this weekend to work on it, so that will have to be a task for later. (Much later, with the way my week is looking.) Longer term, I plan to make some higher-end products, like exploding boxes, never-ending cards, and other novelty cards, as I think that will help draw interest. However, right now I can't see past graduation weekend, so I'm going with it as-is until I have time to get some more stuff in there. My big debut is tomorrow- wish me luck!
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