A few years ago I wasted money on a tradeshow that I had no business exhibiting in. It was at the Women's Apparel and Accessories market at the Denver Merchandise Mart. Now, the DMM is not a bad place to sell goods, but the show was not right for what I was trying to accomplish...another example of my lack of research getting the best of me (and my wallet!). This was way back when I was still making the Denney bags myself out of fabric.

The show cost me $2400.00. I should have walked it beforehand or asked more questions before signing up. It was completely dead almost the whole three days. The only buyers that came in had appointments already set up with the few sales reps that were exhibiting. There were maybe 10-15 booths. I really just sat there for 3 days and tried not to be embarrased. There was a guy in the booth right across from me selling a women's line of clothing. He had several appointments during the three days, but they were clearly with buyers he had already been working with. Most of the time we just sat and stared at each other. I'm sure he was thinking "who is this girl, why is she here...obviously she's new at this".

I was pretty proud of my booth though. I bought a couple coat racks to hang my handbags. And then I bought a couple yards of purple fabric, putting shoe boxes underneath it on the table so I could create different levels for the bags to sit on. I also made little homemade "lookbooks". I made a TON of them. They were small, but I made each one by hand. Not sure what I was thinking there. I still have a HUGE box of them! But they were very cute. I used some textured paper that I bought at Hobby Lobby and then poked holes in all the pages and tied them together with a piece of raffeta. I was in tears trying to get them done the night before the show. Not sure I would use that type of marketing material at a New York show, but hey, I was still learning. The show wasn't a complete loss. I did get one sale. Only one sale. But it was a sale, right?

If you are thinking of doing a local show (especially if you're located outside of NY, LA, Atlanta, Dallas or Florida), try and walk it before signing up. Make sure there will be traffic, not just any traffic, but the right kind of traffic. If you do sign up, its nice if you can get a list of attendees ahead of time so you can send invitations and set appointments with buyers before the show. I don't think all shows provide that, but the some do. I did get a list of attendees for the Denver show ahead of time and it was useful. If nothing else, I had a list of buyers with their store name and address. If you're going to invest a good chunk of money in a show, I would suggest looking into the bigger shows in Atlanta, NY, LA or Dallas. Buyers usually flock to these cities to find lines to place in their store. Of course, then you add travel to your costs.

To do a New York City show, you're looking at $5000 at a minimum. That doesn't include travel costs. That is for 3 days. Three days to make an impression with your line. Personally, I spent several thousand dollars to get all my professional samples made. Once I had them, I could not afford to do a tradeshow without going into debt even further. That stopped me in my tracks. But you can't really stop there. If you want to sell wholesale, you have to get in front of the buyers and do shows. But who has this kind of money?

fashionCEO is setting out to solve this problem for emerging designers. Stay tuned to hear more about this later in the week (how is that for a teaser)!!

Have a fashionable day!

S