selling products in a booth at LA county fair...

[dbeck29]

does anybody have any experience with setting up a booth and selling products at this county fair, or any fair for that matter. This fair has had at least 1.2 million visitors each year for the past 10 years (the fair is 3 weeks long) I have a simple kitchen product that i invented and i should be rolling my first lot out of the manufacture just before the start of the fair. I am debating "releasing" my product to the general market at this fair. If anybody has any experience with this, i would love to hear your feedback. Thanks

 

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[CarrieW]

I have done a few booths/tables at trade shows. what kind of info are you looking for?

I will try to help any way I can.

 

[kurtyordy]

I can answer this from the PA fair circuit. LA is probably different, so take this with a grain of salt.

Your success in launching your product here will depend in part on your price point, and in part in the type of fair.

Type of fair: In PA, fairs are typically agricultural in nature, so attendees go to the fair with two main objectives- to eat and look at animals. If you are not engaged in providing one of these activities, then you have a hard road to hoe. Since you have a kitchen product, if it is involved in food prep, demonstrate it, and allow folks to sample the food it prepares. This will not gaurantee sales, but will draw a crowd.

Price point- in PA, fair attenders are not typically financially well off. So unless these are 10 for a dollar or some sort of great deal at a low price, your launch will be limited.

Again, this is PA, CA folk are a different breed, some may even say alien.

 

[dbeck29]

I have done a few booths/tables at trade shows. what kind of info are you looking for?

I will try to help any way I can.

i was more so just looking for feedback on your experiences with show goers purchasing products.

Im not looking so much for trade shows as i am with actually county/city fairs. They are beasts of a different nature. Thank you

 

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[dbeck29]

I can answer this from the PA fair circuit. LA is probably different, so take this with a grain of salt.

Your success in launching your product here will depend in part on your price point, and in part in the type of fair.

Type of fair: In PA, fairs are typically agricultural in nature, so attendees go to the fair with two main objectives- to eat and look at animals. If you are not engaged in providing one of these activities, then you have a hard road to hoe. Since you have a kitchen product, if it is involved in food prep, demonstrate it, and allow folks to sample the food it prepares. This will not gaurantee sales, but will draw a crowd.

Price point- in PA, fair attenders are not typically financially well off. So unless these are 10 for a dollar or some sort of great deal at a low price, your launch will be limited.

Again, this is PA, CA folk are a different breed, some may even say alien.

thanks for your info and experiences! reps++

 

[RJP]

We did quite a bit of this throughout the New England area. We sold a variety of products. We sold jewelry and other fashion accessories. We did this for approx. 3 years. It was a lot of work. We had two children at the time. We stopped just before my wife gave birth to our third. We had some very good ones and some terrible ones. There is a direct correlation (of course) with the number of attendents and sales volume. (at least that is what we found to be true almost all of the time). Have you been to this particular fair before? Do you know if it is attended well? Is it promoted well? Is it located in a area with a decent population? Are there any other events (or other fairs) going on at the same time that would compete with this one? After doing a few very bad ones in low population areas, I began to look at the demographics of the area before committing. We did some in the N.H. area that were just terrible. (poorly promoted, very low population areas). We did some in the CT. area that were great. Eventually we got in with a company who promoted fairs (amusement company) all over New England. We knew they did a good job promoting them. We got to know them well, and negotiated 50% reduced fees by signing up for approx. (6) at a time. There were occasions when a neighboring town had a fair during the same weekend and cut into the attendence of the one we were doing.

I hope I did not bore you too much. You probably know most of this stuff if you have done it (fairs) before.

I don't know that it would be the best way to build sales of your product, but certainly a good way to test the waters and get some feedback. I don't know what it is you are selling, or who it appeals to, but feedback (other than friends and family, who mean well but are usually not going to want to be brutally honest with you) is important.

If there are enough of your target customers there, you could very well do good. We once did great at a very large flower show .... and our products had nothing to do with flowers. But ...... lot's of women go to flower shows .... and we were selling jewelry and fashion accessories. We blew away all of the plant/flower guys on the floow we were on.
(They were a bit pissed at us since thay saw us as taking away money that may have been spent on their plant/flower stuff).

If you don't mind me asking .... if you have the product already produced, packaged, and ready to sell, why not approach a mass marketer? How about Bed, Bath & Beyond ... or someone like that? If they like it, they will get back to you. I produced a product which I sold thru small independent stores. I approached Bed, Bath & Beyond. Even though (in the end) they decided not to take it on, they were very good about it. Part of their team liked it, and I was close to getting it in their stores.

Best of luck.

 

[RJP]

Thanks.

Yeah .... at times it does feel like that. They can go from loving each other to clobbering each other.

.... they are by far our greatest little assets.

 

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