There are three basic aspects of retailing:
Design - the premises (your booth and its basic structures)
Merchandising - what you put in the premises (your display)
Operations - what staff do (you and anyone who might be helping you at craft shows)
While these retailing concepts are traditionally applied to retail stores, they apply to your craft show display too.
All three aspects of retailing are inter-related. That means that a change to one aspect impacts the other two factors. A cost savings measure in one area may cost you elsewhere. So, when you are designing your craft booth, it’s helpful to think through the ways that a change to one factor may impact the other factors.
For example, the design of your booth impacts merchandising because your basic booth design determines the amount of space you’ll have to display products and the level of flexibility you’ll have to change your booth based on varied conditions at different craft shows. Also, the basic configuration of your booth will impact operations because it will influence where you tend to stand or sit and how you tend to interact with customers.
Imagine, for example, you decide to take away space from your checkout area (which is tempting when you have limited space) to create more space for display. At your next show, you may discover that your check out area is inefficient and checking out customers has become much slower and awkward. If you are at a busy show, the extra time spent checking out customers may easily result in lost customers. If you miss opportunities to talk with potential customers because you are dealing with an inefficient checkout process, you can easily lose sales. In this case, you would have been better off displaying slightly less product while allowing yourself the space you need to deal with customers seamlessly and efficiently.
There are plenty of ways that the three aspects of retailing, design, merchandinsing and operations interact with each other to either improve or hurt your sales; this is just one simple example. When you design or make changes to your craft show booth, be sure to think through the ways that decisions about all three factors will impact each other.
