Adventures in Small Businessland

Last year my husband bought a small business, and since then we (like so many other small businesses) have been struggling to bring in new customers. This spring we decided to host a booth at a local home and garden show. It was quite an adventure for one former and one current cube-dweller.

The show took place both inside and around two enormous tents, on grass. For starters, this meant three days of sneezing. We had a 10' x 10' booth in which to display whatever we wanted. Being new to this business, we had a rather scattershot collection of binders, display examples, handouts, and splashy marketing signs. Over the course of the weekend we learned a lot about what attracts the attention of stroller-by (mainly: keep any messaging short and sweet).

What truly fascinated me was the variety of vendors, their stories, and their selling techniques.

In our aisle, there was the experienced real esatate agent. His marketing differentiator (aside form his expertise) was his pet dachshund (or rather dachshunds). One was featured in all his marketing materials, with a "streeeetch your options" tagline. The other he brought to the show for two days and she attracted and entranced any of a number of passer-by. He also had the world's largest jar of whole wheat pretzels. They had partially hydrogenated oils, so we declined.

There was a booth about a local retirement community, staffed by two women who were rarely there. They had a tri-fold display, not unlike standard elementary school science fair displays, with photographs of the facility, and a laptop. And a floral arragement. With dead flowers. Ow.

There was the tile guy who, when he started to get too old to install tiles, had invented a system that would first clean your tiles saintly bright, and then protect them from turning scungy again. He and his team had a tile display that they faithfully sprayed with some magical solution that somehow caused the treated and untreated tiles to differentiate themselves. Afterwards, they would wipe the wet tiles dry. Talk, spray, wipe. All weekend.

There were the two guys from San Francisco who had tired of corporate life, bought a small business, and moved to the burbs. They seemed to get a lot of interest, and to know what they were doing. Where did they learn it? Maybe it was just their corner booth (those sell for a premium).

And, our favorite, the Glengarry Glenn Ross mattress salesman. He was ready to sell. He was hungry to sell. He was big. He was sweaty. His competitor mattress salesman stopped by frequently to check on his business. "Did you get any leads? Did you sell any mattresses? How many presentations did you make?" Everyone in our aisle could give his pitch by the end of the weekend. He had one thing right though; when traffic was slow (and it often was), he would recline on one of the beds and type emails on his Treo.

Aside from our immediate neighbors there were the cookery demos, the "Ragin' Cajun" hot sauces, the "just add three ingredients" dips, the world's best chamois, lint brushes, invisible screens, tiles, doors, windows, mortgage brokers, leather purses, cellphone accessories, childrens' toys, dog trainers, jewelers, and my personal favorite...the tiki furniture folks.

We all showed up on Friday morning, unloaded our hybrids/trucks/trailers and set up our booths, smiled and demonstrated for three days, then broke down and drove away again on Sunday. What struck me was the amount of effort that goes in to these events, the amount of hope that comes with the entrepreneurs, and the strange transient quality of the entire arrangement. It was a tent city, a mobile market, a somewhat targeted salesroom for just three days. Some of the exhibitors went back to brick and mortar stores, others just moved on to the next show. The world of the Small Business owner is so different from a (comparatively) reliable corporate Dilbert job. More stressful, fewer rules, and just a question of whether or not you can reach your audience and get them to BUY BUY BUY.

A Frustrating Start

Well, I thought it would be easy to get a headshot of myself on to the site, but apparently I was wrong. This is getting a bit frustrating.

(Eight uploads later....and some surfing through Blogger Help...)

It appears to be a problem with Blogger tonight. Well, no cool profile update for me for now.