Do you sell homemade jams, jellies, sauces or dips at craft shows? If so, you really must allow customers easy access to sample your products.

I recently attended a craft show as a customer and came across someone who was selling homemade jams. They sounded intriguing: the packaging was beautiful, the ingredients were unusual and interesting, and the names of each flavor were descriptive. The problem - customers were not allowed to freely sample the jams. The person at the booth was very friendly, but when she mentioned that I would have to ask if I wanted a sample of her jam (she didn’t want to leave open bottles because she said she didn’t want to attract bugs - bugs crawling in your jam is not the image you want to bring to a customer’s mind), unfortunately, the likelihood of me buying anything at her booth was significantly reduced.

Of course, if you sell homemade food items at craft shows, there are some reasons why you may hesitate to provide samples to customers:

• You have to absorb the cost of providing the free samples.
• You’ll have to be aware of hygiene and allergy issues.
• Your booth will need to be cleaned up more frequently, and you’ll need to be prepared for spills.
• Your open jars might attract insects at an outdoor show (I’ve never seen that myself, but I assume it’s a possibility).

There are, however, plenty of good reasons to provide customers with easy access to samples, and they all ultimately come down to more sales for you.

• If your recipes are truly top notch and unique, you’ll be well on your way to making a sale once customers sample your food.
• While customers don’t expect to sample new products that they buy in a grocery store, it’s not a part of the experience and big companies have brand recognition and big marketing behind them, customers buying homemade jams, sauces, etc. at craft shows have been trained to expect samples as a part of the experience.
• Your company is probably unknown to customers, so providing a sample allows you to build trust and demonstrate that your recipes are superior.
• Although some people will sample products without making a purchase, all of the people hanging around your booth trying samples will draw more customers to your booth. Having plenty of interested customers at your booth effectively brings more customers into your booth.
• Making customers ask for samples is, in a lot of ways, equivalent to not pricing your items clearly. People don’t want to have to ask. They are concerned that it will be awkward if they ask you for a sample and then decide not to buy, and many will simply not ask to avoid any possible awkwardness.

For customers, attending a craft show is about the enjoyment and entertainment of the experience as much as it is about discovering and buying unique treasures. People like to experience items at craft shows with all of their senses, and providing samples of your homemade jams, jellies, sauces and dips will allow your potential customers to do that and improve your sales.

A digital photo frame can be a smart addition to your craft show booth display. They are lightweight, simple to use, and can add enough movement and color to your craft booth to attract customers’ attention without detracting from your items.

You may have read advice to bring your laptop computer to craft shows and project images from your laptop onto a screen in order to add interest to your booth. I know I came across that advice when I first started planning my craft show display. While it may be appropriate in some settings, every time I thought about bringing my own laptop to add to my display at a show, I’d come up with a long list of reasons why I didn’t want to. The laptop could easily get broken, I’d have to find (and transport) some way to project the images, if not done well it has a lot of potential to being too distracting etc.

A good sized digital photo frame; however, can provide a lot of the benefits of a changing display without a lot of the hassles and potential problems of dragging your laptop to a show.

• Digital photo frames are lightweight and easy to transport with the rest of your craft show supplies.
• As long as you pack them reasonably carefully, there’s little chance that they will break.
• They are attractive and meant to display images, so you don’t need any extra equipment (keep in mind, you will need to be able to plug it in).
• While they can be a bit pricey, if you watch the sales, you can get them for a reasonable price (mine was regularly $100, and I got it for about $50 simply by watching the sale flyers that are delivered to my house).
• They are fairly popular, so if you don’t have one already, you may be able to borrow one from a friend to try it out before committing to buying one yourself.
• If you don’t do a lot of shows, you can use it to display personal photos in your home when you’re not using it as a part of your craft display.

Since the frames are typically not huge, you’ll want to keep your images simple and adjust the settings on the frame so the images change at a moderate pace so customers have enough time to take in each image. Keep some consistency to each image you use so they look as though they belong together as a set. You may display:

• Close up photos of your items that show detail and craftsmanship. This can be particularly effective if the items your make are small.
• A list of your prices and any specials you may be offering
• Simple photos of your studio or your items at different stages as they are being created

and/or

• Your business logo

I’ve seen digital photo frames used to very good effect in a few booths. The movement of the changing photos can be very eye catching and can draw customers to your booth, but at the same time, they are subtle enough to fit nicely into the look and feel of many different types of craft show booths.

For more tips on designing your craft booth see the page Craft Show Display on the main Inspiri site.

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