I recently read the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. While it’s not specifically a book about building a craft business, it includes a lot of really great information that can be applied to selling crafts.

The book explains what makes an idea “sticky”, that is memorable or interesting, and those concepts can be applied to all of your craft business marketing efforts.

According to Made to Stick, characteristics of sticky ideas are:

Simplicity - You must find the essential core of your idea

Unexpectedness - Be counter-intuitive, break people’s expectations, build interest and curiosity by opening gaps in their knowledge (make them realize they don’t know something they assumed they knew) and then filling those gaps

Concreteness - Express abstract truths, statictics, for example, in concrete images

Credibility - Allow people to test your ideas for themselves

Emotions - Find the right emotion to harness and make your audience or customers feel something

Stories - Telling stories will move people to action

All of these concepts can be applied to the way you speak about your items, the marketing materials you develop and the image you create in your displays, packaging and other branding materials. Because the book is about promoting ideas in general and not running a craft business specifically, you’ll have to take a bit of time to think through the ways each concept will apply to your business. The concepts will apply, however, and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die provides some exceptional insights into making your ideas “stick” in the minds of your customers.

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.

I’ve added a new feature to the Inspiri home site. I’ve asked craft business customers to provide their tips and feedback on selling crafts. If you’ve ever wondered what your customers are really thinking (and not telling you), here’s a chance to discover what goes through a customer’s mind when shopping for handmade items.

You’ll find customer tips on selling crafts here: Sell Your Crafts - Customer Tips For Selling Crafts

I recently finished reading Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping by Paco Underhill. His company has studied the behavior of thousands of customers in many different settings, so I was hoping to find some new and interesting tidbits that could be applied to a craft business.

There are some books that are great to own, and there are others that are good to get on loan from the library. While there is interesting and useful information in Why We Buy, I’d say this book is a good book to borrow, and not necessarily a book you must have in your own library.

Here are a few quick tidbits that are described in more detail in the book:

What do shoppers love?
Touch
Mirrors
Discovery
Talking (stores that attract groups do well)
Recognition (being known and remembered by staff)
Bargains

What do shoppers hate?
Too many mirrors
Lines
Having to Ask Dumb Questions
Goods out of Stock
Obscure Price Tags
Poor Service

Among the interesting research findings presented in the book that you might apply to your craft displays are the following:

People slow down when they see a reflective surface.

People naturally reach right, so a good way to introduce a new product is to place it to the right of an established item.

If shoppers perceive an interesting item at the back of your store when they are standing at the front of your store (or booth) they will make their way back to the interesting item. Don’t make the back wall a “dead zone”; getting shoppers off the aisles and into your booth should be a big goal in your craft booth design.

Shoppers want to experience merchandise before they buy. Let them try and touch as much as possible. Money lost to damaged product that has been sampled or handled will be minimal compared with increased sales you’ll make as a result of letting customers experience your products.

It’s easier to sell up when products can be sampled. If a customer can feel the difference between your luxury body lotion and your basic body lotion, they can compare on factors other than price, and you’ll sell more of the luxury lotion.