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Post by HankRocks on Mar 17, 2023 7:00:32 GMT -5
Setting up today for the Gem Show this weekend at the Pasadena Convention center, hopefully the rain will be out of here before unload time. It's been an outstanding show for me the last two years sales-wise. Curious to see if sales will be affected by any of the economic un-certainty. Have re-vamped my layout to reduce some of the lower selling items and increase others. Will see how it goes.
Henry
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Post by jasoninsd on Mar 17, 2023 8:58:30 GMT -5
Good luck at the show Henry!!
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Mar 17, 2023 10:46:43 GMT -5
Good luck on your show, Henry! I hope you enjoy stellar sales.
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Post by rockjunquie on Mar 17, 2023 14:33:03 GMT -5
Good luck and have a great time.
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dshanpnw
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since December 2020
Posts: 896
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Post by dshanpnw on Mar 17, 2023 16:20:58 GMT -5
Good luck Henry, should be interesting and fun.
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Post by HankRocks on Mar 20, 2023 19:51:23 GMT -5
Well all the Show material got emptied today and mostly put up. It was a decent show although sales were down 50% from last year. That may skewed by the fact that last year was an exceptional year. This year was down about 33% from 2 Shows ago. Some analysis on my part came up with several reasons for the decrease.
1) The Show was about 3 weeks later than normal. Instead of last weekend in February, it was 3 weekends later. What that did do is allow the Show to be held on the last of 19 days of the Houston Rodeo. They have huge crowds, 2.4 million last year and lots of places to spend discretionary funds. The crowd was good, just not as much money to spend.
2) I think there were 3 or 4 extra Vendors. That will dilute the spending for individual Vendors.
3) Inflation, it seems some folks would rather spend their extra money on food instead of rocks!!
I have also noticed that a good bit of the material being sold is bought wholesale and then sold. Few folks make or polish all their merchandise. Nothing wrong with that and a good many folks are making a living and working hard doing it. One side effect is that I can answer questions about how some of the processes work.
Did have some folks who went to collect on my information I gave them last year and came by this year to show me their finds. Also met a couple of folks with small shops(metaphysical) who could be future buyers of my material. One lady bought all my under-table spare Bingham Blue Fluorite. It's always a good networking opportunity for me.
And, my tumbled rocks did great with about 25% of my total sales.
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Post by jasoninsd on Mar 20, 2023 20:16:37 GMT -5
Thanks for the show report Henry...although it was sad to read sales were down! Your reasoning behind the decline sounds...well...sound!
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Mar 20, 2023 21:29:24 GMT -5
Glad you had a decent show, Henry. I'm not surprised that sales were down a bit. Of course, the bank failures may have had an effect, too, along with the other things you mentioned. I'm always happy when we make our booth fee back. Then anything else we make is gravy!
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Post by HankRocks on Mar 21, 2023 6:57:53 GMT -5
Glad you had a decent show, Henry. I'm not surprised that sales were down a bit. Of course, the bank failures may have had an effect, too, along with the other things you mentioned. I'm always happy when we make our booth fee back. Then anything else we make is gravy! Well I was not unhappy with the results. I can buy more beer than I could ever drink and I would have to drive an awful lot miles to burn up those earnings! I suppose i will have to buy more rocks!!! (shhhh!! don't tell my wife) One more local Craft Show in about a month. Will see how sales go there. Different market, mostly local to my area of town. I adjust my merchandise mix a bit to fit the clientele Then I am off until late Oct. One more factor that my wife pointed out, it was the last weekend of Spring Break for most kids around here. I did notice that there weren't as many kids at the Show. At the Craft Shows a Mom or Grandparent with a couple of bored kids in tow usually get's $5 or $10 out of their purse to temporarily quiet the kids.
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hummingbirdstones2
fully equipped rock polisher
Vince A., 1958-2023
Member since August 2018
Posts: 1,461
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Post by hummingbirdstones2 on Mar 21, 2023 9:51:49 GMT -5
Good observation on the kids there, Henry. I've always said the kids "drag their parents around by their wallets". Good thing about that is if you have a good mix of stuff sometimes the parents will buy something too.
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