: clay lover - Viewing Profile

JBaymore, on 22 May 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

and the statement came from my then instructor. .....

Having no tent can result in the ware being too hot to touch, sales will go out the window when that happens.

Try off white table draping, from Lowe's, painters drop cloths in all sizes, cheap. Get big enough to go to the ground on 3 sides, then do hospital like corners, pinned in to keep from having folds on the ground at the ends. Gives you a place to hide junk out of site.

A white back drop behind your work can help, keeps the background from stealing the show, and can be as simple as sheers from the dollar store hung neatly from the shelf backs.
Displays at different height on a shelf help. If you have 6 mugs, say, cut cubes from 4x4s and paint them white, put the 2 back mugs up on the cubes. I have a box of assorted 4x4 and 2x4 pieces for that purpose. Lots of simple light colored risers is good. 2x4x8 with strip of 1x2 screwed into each end under it for legs makes a good one 4x4 slicesd into different heights makes ramp effect.. endless possibilities, cheap. Manyt big box lumber store will cut for you for a small fee if you buy the wood from them. Get dressed pine for a better finish, sand edges to soften.

Mark McCombs, on 23 May 2013 - 01:18 AM, said:

I do. It is a big old dresser top thing, sits at about10 o'clock to my wheel head. It has helped me straighten up a bunch.

Definitely drop the funky tent as soon as you can afford to . might not be able to afford NOT to. It will make you look cheezy, not a good sales approach. unless it is a funky market where you are, would have to visit before to know that.

How your booth looks is everything to getting people to look at your work. The work shoud be what they see, not the tent, or decorations.

I had good luck at outside shows with putting large, flat baskets of small things on the ground at the front corners of my booth. People pasing by would look in , see something that made them want to look through the basket, find a low priced piece that was easy to like and buy. To make the purchase, they would need to come into the booth and then see more that they wanted.
Baskets are a good way to group similar things and keep the shelves from being cluttered. Anything that keeps the booth from looking like a second hand pottery store. Pull colors together, use multiple plate stands, stack sames up,ect.
Carefull planning will boost your sales, if the work is good and the prices right .


Good luck.

Good luck with that. Seems every time I spend weeks, months, working out the process of a new design, the first buyer for it will be another potter in my area that will have a poorly done copy of it, priced at half what I am seling it for, available at the next show in our area. Or even better, entered in a jurried event as their new work. If you figure out how to stop this, I expect all of us would like to know how you did it.