Spoiler alert, this was another great show, no need to read anymore of this blog....
But seriously, it's quite a lot of hard work to get through a five day show, so here it is in a nutshell, well a reasonably sized nutshell
Day1, setup day.
The car is packed to the max with art, clothes for the week, tools and just stuff that you may or may not need whilst you are away. As it's going to be a long day, and I don't know when I will be eating again, I always go for a cooked breakfast, yes I know I could do it myself, but I just don't want the faff, and it's a bit of a treat, so off we go to the café at 7.30am.
That done we are off to the show ground, Blenheim Palace, 2.5 hours south of us, in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Due to traffic and the fact that I am driving slowly, because I have so much fragile art in the back of the car, (my wife's 4x4, my car doesn't have enough space) it takes us almost 3 hours to get there.
There is the usual waiting around on site before we get to our booth, but finally we are in position.
Thankfully its a sunny day, noting worse that trying to set up in a cold windy and or wet day, especially as we are outside, been there done that.
It's all solid wooden walls in the 3m x 3m booth, and it doesn't take much more that 2 hours to get all of the art on the walls, some small decorative shelves and flowers in vases. I wanted the booth to look as high end as possible, and I am happy with what we have achieved.
So we leave site, and drive off to find out digs for the week.
We find them but there is no street paring within around 500 yards, so it's a matter of parking up in town, feeding the meter, and trekking off to the digs fully loaded like a pack horse, if only I had chosen a place with parking or closer to the centre of town.
A quick freshen up and we are off back up the hill into town for a beer and then something to eat.
A successful first day.
Day 2, Show day 1.
The first three days at this show are always quiet from a traders perspective as its all about footfall. The more people that pass you booth, the more chance you have of catching someone who is interested in your work, and making a sale, and days 1-3 are Wednesday to Friday, so it's always going to be a little quiet.
BUT, day 1 and sale 1, excellent way to start off the week. The new Cavallino on Carbon piece is going to a new home in Billericay in Essex, wonderful.
Day 3 & 4.
These days start at 10.00am and close at 5.00pm, however, it all goes quiet around 12.30 as people start to go to lunch and it doesn't get busy again around 2.00pm, so its a bit of a wait. People occasionally come into the booth, but my work is expensive, so its only of interest to a select few of the viewers, which is fine, but you really need to land these prospective clients, and that doesn't happen on either of these three days.
Day 5 and 6
These are the weekend days, and they are a lot busier than the first three days. Again they are 10-5 but there must be at least 3x the amount of people walking past which is great.
Both days brought some people who were really close to purchasing, but I just couldn't get them over the line which is a little frustrating but that's the game we are in.
I managed to get to speak to a few other companies that were at the show, which I will need to follow up with after the event.
So at 5.00pm all of the visitors are ushered off the field, and we are finally allowed to get the car back to our booth and start to break down and load up the car again. It's been a long day and a very long week, standing around and talking to people, and trying top lead the conversation to a sale is actually quite exhausting.
I will be the first to admit that I'm not a natural salesman, but you have to do your best, and sometimes it works and other times it doesn't, but you have to keep learning as you go, and learn from your mistakes.
So all in all, one sale, which paid for the entry fee and the digs for a week, so we broke even, I made a few good contacts, and added a few new people to my email list, so I'm calling that a success, and we will be back next year, so it cant have been all bad, but its damn hard work.