We did it! We had a GREAT night at our Christmas in July Vendor Fair! Eighteen vendors participated and it was a well attended event.
If you read my previous post, you know that the vendor fair was an idea that came about 2 weeks before the event. I talked to a friend about us doing a Christmas in July event and she was for it, but didn't have time to help much. So in 2 weeks I organized this event. I set up a vendor page on Facebook for the vendors to get information, ask questions and communicate with each other. It was a great way for us to stay in touch and get answer quickly. Especially since we had a 2 week window of time to plan and execute our night!
I must say that I think it turned out pretty awesome!
We ran an advertisement in our local newspaper. Our ad had an amazing location on the second page of the newspaper! It was a good size too: 2 columns wide x 5 inches deep.
Here's what our ad looked like:
We held our event at the Urban Barn. It's an cute little place in downtown Toccoa that you can rent for an event. The owners are great to work with! We filled the room with the 18 vendors. We had 16 vendors along the walls and 2 of us were in the middle. Our customers could walk around the room and see all the vendors. We even had a local church's ministry group sell refreshments.
This is what our room looked liked:
This picture does not include all the vendors - there are a few to either side of me and behind me from where I took this picture. The picture was taken at a time in the evening when things had slowed down a little! That's my "booth" in the middle. I'll tell you more about that later on.
We had all the customers sign in when they arrived and they were given a number. When they visited a booth they used that number to register for prizes. After our event we created a spreadsheet of all the customer information and distributed it to our vendors via our Facebook page. This helped our customers save time so they did not have to write their name, address, and phone number at each and every booth! If the vendor had a door prize, they drew a number, looked up the person's information on the spreadsheet, and then contacted the person.
I used a shelving unit to display my products. I was trying to find a way to display a lot of my products in a limited space. So my answer was to go UP! I took up the allotted space, but had 5 times the display area by using the shelf. And since I was in the middle, people could walk around my display. This enabled me to have more products on display.
Here's my display:
This is a closer look at my soaps:
Our event was well attended and when I asked the vendors if they would participate if we had another vendor fair, they said they would... So guess what! Our next vendor fair is already planned!
We are having it on:
Saturday, October 17
Hill Street Baptist Church in Toccoa
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
We plan to have over 30 vendors and crafters, as well as an author!
Here's a link to our event on Facebook.
We hope that you can attend!
https://www.facebook.com/events/505409406288760/
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