Part 2: Preparing to do wholesale. My initial questions.

As soon as I knew I was attend­ing the Buyer’s Mar­ket of Amer­i­can Craft (BMAC), I wrote a cou­ple of notes to Wendy Rosen. She’s an amaz­ing woman and a ter­rific advo­cate for the artist. She is the founder of the Rosen Group and the Buyer’s Mar­ket of Amer­i­can Craft. She imme­di­ately sug­gested request­ing a men­tor for the show and with Laura Bamburak’s help I was assigned two vet­eran BMAC sell­ers who were avail­able to answer any addi­tional ques­tions that I might have. (I really didn’t use the men­tors before the show, but I was thrilled to have one of the men­tors visit my booth reg­u­larly dur­ing the show to check in and answer any ques­tions I might have.)

Here were my ini­tial ques­tions about the show and my answers after the fact:

Will there be artists offer­ing orig­i­nal paint­ings on can­vas, or do most artists just offer prints of their work?

I won­dered if my work would be hid­den among the vast sea of ceram­ics, glass and jew­elry as these seemed like the largest cat­e­gories of work at the show.

Answer:

Hon­estly, there were all sorts of artists at this show. Jew­elry and glass were pop­u­lar cat­e­gories and had many ven­dors, but there were all sorts of artists rep­re­sented. Some were very large ven­dors with a great vari­ety of items, oth­ers had only a few items to show. One of my artist friends asked “How big to you have to be to do this type of show?” After see­ing some of what folks had to offer, I’d say size isn’t the most impor­tant thing. Hav­ing an item that the buyer wants, at the right price, is more impor­tant. I saw some ven­dors that offered only one item in slight vari­a­tions, but they made incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful pieces that had mar­ket value to the buyers.

Is mixed media the best cat­e­gory for me, or should I be in home décor?

Answer:

For this show, rugs, fur­ni­ture, wall hang­ings, lamps, etc seemed make up home décor. So, I think Mixed-Media was an excel­lent choice for what I was sell­ing. I loved the ecclen­tic blend of ven­dors that were included in the Mixed-Media group. Can’t imag­ine being placed elsewhere.

Do I mainly bring sam­ples of my work and allow buy­ers to place orders? Do the buy­ers pay for items at the show? Is there cash-and-carry?
Answer: This event was an ‘order-writing’ event. Ven­dors write orders at the show and the buy­ers spec­ify a time at which they would like the items shipped. I ended up writ­ing orders from ASAP until Sep­tem­ber 2010. Some ven­dors did have a ‘cash and carry” sec­tion on their table and oth­ers offered to sell their floor sam­ples on the last day of the event.

Real­is­ti­cally, what was this going to cost me? Beside the booth fee, what would I need to pur­chase to setup my booth?

Answer:

The Booth

I pur­chased a 10x10 booth $1875.00. This space came ‘piped and draped’ which essen­tially means that there were cur­tains divid­ing your space from your neighbor’s space. Elec­tri­cal was pur­chased sep­a­rately. And, since the light­ing in the con­ven­tion cen­ter was set on 1/3 power, (i.e., Each third light was illu­mi­nated) buy­ing light­ing was essential.

Har­grove Inc was the Offi­cial Ser­vice Con­trac­tor for the BMAC and pro­vided booth rental options. I didn’t end up using their ser­vice. I had tables and dis­plays already avail­able from some of the art/craft shows that I’ve done at out­door fes­ti­vals. So, I didn’t pur­chase their floor­ing, tables, lights, etc. Although this is likely con­ve­nient for ven­dors trav­el­ing from ‘out-of-town’.

I’m far from hav­ing the per­fect booth and many expe­ri­enced ven­dors tell me that their booth changes from year to year. (It’s never fin­ished!) But as a first-time exhibitor, I am pretty pleased with how my booth looked.(Will try to get a pic­ture uploaded.)

I didn’t want to make a huge finan­cial com­mit­ment, as I do not know how often I will attend shows such as this. So, my ini­tial pur­chases were a few dis­play stands that allowed me to hang my paint­ings (I hung them with s-shaped shower hooks) Ini­tially, I hung these only on the dis­play stands, but they were only 4ft high in a 10 ft. booth and dif­fi­cult to see over the tables. So, after a rec­om­men­da­tion from my men­tor (thanks Stacy Sim­brom of Angels with Atti­tude) and my booth neigh­bor (the amaz­ingly tal­ented Lau­ren Henry), we dis­played a few paint­ings hang­ing from the booth’s top rails. I also had paint­ings dis­played on easels($45 ea). Much like how they would look in my studio.

Light­ing

I pur­chased track light­ing from Lowes. Approx. $150 w/ bulbs. The rec­om­men­da­tion was to have 10 lights for a 10x10 space. I ended up buy­ing 9. I only dis­played 6 of the lights and now wish I had included a bit more light­ing. Buy lots of zip ties from the hard­ware store. These were so help­ful in hang­ing the lights and secur­ing the exten­sion cords to the cross bars and the side poles of the booth.

Misc.

I pur­chased inter­lock­ing trade show floor­ing. (approx $185.00) I pur­chased these at wesellmats.com. I bought the pre­mium car­pet squares. The char­coal shows every bit of lint, dust, etc. So, per­haps a lighter color would have been bet­ter. But, if you choose the darker shade…keep a lint brush, tape, or broom handy. You might need it. From SoftTiles.com, I found a great car­ry­ing bag (under $30.00) that fits the 2x2 ft square floor mats. (You can also pur­chase the tiles from Soft­Tiles, but I wanted to use car­pet, rather than foam.)

Total Invest­ment

My fees came to about $3000.00 for booth fee, floor­ing, light­ing and a few other booth displays.

About the Author

Kris­ten Stein was one our first Fea­tured Artists while she focuses on two dimen­sional medi­ums she has also spread out to jew­elry and pho­tog­ra­phy. Although her work is exhib­ited widely she has coura­geously embraced the chal­lenges of a work­ing artist in the 21st cen­tury. This series is the result of one such embrace and leap of faith. In it she chron­i­cles her expe­ri­ence as an exhibitor in one of the coun­tries top whole­sale shows the Buy­ers Mar­ket of Amer­i­can Craft.
Being accepted into this show is no small thing, and it rep­re­sents the extent of Kristen’s artis­tic and busi­ness growth over the past year.

You can find Kris­ten here:

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