Last weekend, for the first time ever, I attended a festival as a vendor. The Jackson Art, Beer & Wine festival is fantastic and I have attended several times, even volunteering a couple as well. This year though I decided to apply as a vendor and see how much scratch off poster products work in-person.
I've been designing and selling these things for a few years and they do pretty well online but there is still always a part of me wondering how well they resonate with people. When you only sell online you never get to experience people's reactions when they see your products.
I worked really hard in the weeks and months leading up to ABW to make sure I had everything necessary to represent my business well. I stocked up on inventory, finished some new designs, printed samples, acquired a canopy and other display essentials, ordered a card reader, completed my rebrand, and made some brand and pricing signs. Shoutout to my brother in law Rogan who helped a great deal with the planning and rebranding.
This turned out to be a wonderful experience. In terms of sales it was fine; I made enough to feel good about it. But mostly I absolutely loved getting to see how people responded to the products. Visitors to my booth had such nice things to say. There was genuine excitement about my designs. Everyone who came in browsed my collection of posters and saw in them someone they wanted to buy for.
That's a big part of my focus. My differentiation if you will. I am trying to build out my catalog with a wide variety of scratch off posters representing all kinds of niche interests. There are already lots of other scratch off poster sellers out there selling travel maps and top 100 movies and so on. I'm trying to offer something different. Something unique.
My experience at ABW re-energized me. First of all it made me feel like I can hang. Like my products ARE good enough to be sold at events and retail establishments. Second of all, it renewed my belief that there is an exciting market for bucket list themed posters on a wide array of themes.
My only negatives for this particular event were 1) I was in a pretty low traffic spot. If I had been on the main drag, I would have sold 4x or 5x what I did. And 2) it was a lot of work to prep for plus the Saturday away from home.
Those are pretty minor issues though. I don't see myself suddenly signing up for events all over the state but I will try some again. In particular, I think closer to the holidays would be awesome because these work really well as gifts.