The first thing I would say about going to the JB as a vendor is... don't fret over it! I did so much fretting over it... am I taking the right stuff, enough stuff. ??? Cammie a friend of mine kept telling me not too. She's done the show for 4 years, but did say the first year she was worried too. We took a 20' trailer stuffed with a few things in the pick up too. We had 2 spaces and couldn't fit it all in our booth. We were able to fill in as we sold. We did come home with stuff.
Coming from out of state our expenses were pretty high. We had to rent the trailer since we don't own one, then there was gas, hotel (we stayed 4 nights) , food & space rental. About $1,800.00.
If you can share a room or booth space that would cut down on your expenses.
You need at least 2 people with you and more if you have many booth spaces. You need someone to man your booth for restroom breaks, food runs or looking around at all the great junk. It's helpful to have one at your cash space & one helping customers.
Come with all your merchandise priced! and have signs ready to put up by multiple items that your not pricing individually. For two spaces it took the whole set up time to get things together. We did do some last minute pricing a 1/2 before early birds arrived. Each night we spruced & re-arranged the booth so it looked new and fresh for the next day. We rounded up our prices to include tax and made it even numbers so we didn't have to deal with change or figuring tax. It was easier, but I think we cheated ourselves out of some tax money that we'll have to pay. We took about $150.00 in change. You'll need lot's of ones and fives. I did take checks but no credit cards. People did ask if we took credit cards and I think it would help with larger priced items. I think these days people are so used to using there debt cards. I didn't have any issues with the checks!
Be prepared to be asked by customers to take less. We didn't have as many people as I thought ask, but several did.
Take a lot of smalls! We did sell 4 larger pieces of furniture that my husband built from old doors/windows and a few smaller end tables etc. Most of what sold was small items. We didn't take anything to make walls around our booth. We had enough bigger furniture to make the walls. It is nice to have something to define your booth space from your neighbors.
We took plastic sacks, lunch sacks & tissue paper for customers purchases. A lot of customers had there own reusable sacks. Take business cards or flyers for your shop, on line store, blog site etc.
The early bird morning was busy, then at 10:00 it got really busy! Friday was nice and steady and Saturday was busy, but not as crazy busy as I thought it would be.
Hope I didn't bore you. Feel free to email me through my website if you have any more questions.
Laurie
www.thewhistlestopcountrystore.com
www.whistlestopcountrystore.blogspot.com
Midge,
Sorry we didn't get to chat at the JB. It was pretty overwhelming with so many vendors, people and great junk to look at. I was in total awe the first night I got to walk around and see all the booths.
Hopefully next year!
L. :)
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