Maximizing your display for awards and sales

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="05bfd5a3.jpg"> <div> <B>Maximizing  Your   Display    For    Awards   and    Sales</B></div> <div> <B>347-LOVE-ART  (347-568-3278) </B><B> Toll Free 1-877-512-3333    Email: </B><A HREF="mailto:mike@mikealbin.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:mike@mikealbin.com"><U><B>mike@mikealbin.com</B></U></A></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="05cd2043.jpg"> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mike Albin.Com "><U>Mike Albin.Com </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="wd.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Web design"><U>Web design</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="ma.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marketing Articles"><U>Marketing Articles</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="sr.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Show Reviews"><U>Show Reviews</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="mt.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marketing Tools"><U>Marketing Tools</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="l.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U>Links</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <div> I’ve been walking around art shows lately really noticing how artists try and maximize their displays.  There are two schools of thought and some artists are doing both.  Ever notice certain artists that change their displays the moment the judges leave their booth?  If you’ve been doing art shows long enough you do realize that most of the time what impresses a judge usually is completely different from what the public buys.  So displaying different works of art for judging then changing to something the public will buy can maximize your potential for receiving awards.  This article is going to focus on both types of displays.  </div> <div> Judges usually come around sometime early on the first day of the show, hopefully!  You should not wait too late in the day to switch over to items that sell because as traffic flows by your booth so do all of those potential sales.  People that see your work will walk around the show or go home and think about which piece they want and come back later to buy.  If they come by early and miss your best selling work, they may not come back later in the show to buy.  Therefore, I would only attempt these dual set-ups for shows that have really good monetary awards.  </div> <div> To impress judges stay away from mainstream subjects that sell well and focus more on what sets you apart from all other artists. Differing techniques that you’ve experimented with yourself. Show off your technical abilities and skills. DO NOT COPY SOMEONE ELSE’S AWARD WINNING WORK AND TRY TO PASS IT OFF AS YOURS! More often than not your copies are inferior to someone that’s developed their skills, it’s cheap and shows you have very little character. Be original and spend extra time on these “judging pieces”. Put a much higher price tag (double) because of the extra time involved in making them. Remember you’re really not try to sell these pieces anyway. You’re saving them to hang early on to impress judges and win awards. Occasionally these pieces will sell at their higher prices, it’s a great boost of confidence that maybe you can raise your prices on the pieces that sell well also.</div> <div> For two-D artists to impress the judges, hang your work very sparsely throughout your booth.  Try to stay with uniformed sizes of work evenly spaced and level.  Like you would see artwork displayed in a museum.  If you overcrowd your booth with work judges tend not to pay attention to specific details in each piece.  They’ll instead look and focus on the overall appearance of all of your pieces. The same holds true for three-D artists and jewelers.  Put out a few of your best technical pieces, not what sells best.  Don’t overcrowd your display.  If the judges have 10 good pieces to look at verses 25 different pieces scattered around, they are more likely to focus on the individual pieces of work not the entire body of work.  </div> <div> Once the judges have left your booth it’s time put out your best selling pieces and as many of them as you can.  If someone can’t see it, it’s not going to sell.  Try to keep your display organized, well balanced and symmetrical.  Like scenes and colors should be displayed together so someone looking for that type of scene or colors can find most of the pieces you offer in one area.  That area is really likely to catch their eye and bring them in.  Put your largest most show stopping piece on your back wall so that it can seen easily from the street or aisle.  This is what is going to stop people in their tracks and get them into your booth to say “WOW!”  You’re going to have a huge price tag on this piece, it’s not going to sell very often but when it does it will make your whole weekend.  Jewelers should have 16x20 or 20x30 inch posters of their best eye catching pieces mounted and laminated hanging on the back wall of their booths.  Have these photos taken professionally, you can even have your name and web address digitally added to the bottom of the posters.  If a jeweler has two or three people in front of their booth, people walking by may not be able to see what’s in their display cases.  Everyone should be able to see your posters and if patrons like what’s on the posters they’ll wait a few minutes to see what’s in the cases.  If the patron’s view is blocked by several people standing at your display cases and you don’t have posters, more often than not people just keep walking.    </div> <div> If your work has complicated techniques that you want to explain to the public have a photo of you doing the work in your booth or a half finished piece of art somewhere in the booth.  A picture is worth a thousand words and it will help create interest and excitement in your booth.  Try and get that buying frenzy going.  Having a few people in your booth creates excitement and people feel less weary about walking into an empty booth.  These are great tools for getting conversation started.  Once it’s started, tell your story and lead into “Are you looking for something to fit a particular spot?”  </div> <div> These photos or half finished pieces should only be used at small to medium sized shows.  At larger shows (100,000 people and up) where your booth is likely to be full of astonished people asking you tons of questions, these types of props will only keep them in your booth longer and the people that do want to buy from you may not be able to get in.  At larger shows we try to get the people that are obviously not going to buy from us out of our booth as quickly as we can.  Always try to be polite but if they’ve made the statement “I have no more wall space” go onto the next person.  Our booth fills up pretty fast and if people are walking by and can’t get in we can’t make sales.  Those kinds of props can be counter productive at large shows.  If you have a corner booth space and can display on an outside wall, you might consider using props there.  If you find your booth filling up to fast with people only wanting to talk about techniques and not buying, take it down.  </div> <div> Somewhere in your booth you should always have an 8x10 photo hanging of one of your pieces of art in someone’s home.  Show what your art looks like in it’s finished environment.  We have a photo of one of our pieces hanging over our own sofa.  Make sure you include the surroundings in the photo, the sofa and coffee table too.  I took the photo digitally and included the caption “Our pieces look great in your home”  at the top of the photo.  It plants a seed, yes, one of these would look great in our home.  It’s kind of a subtle way to be obvious. </div> <div> Have a book of photos of your work hanging or displayed in customers homes.  Also have testimonial letters from past customers in the book.  If you see someone has been back to your booth several times and still cannot make the commitment to buy, show them the book!  Look at how many happy customers we have and how great our work looks in homes and offices.  If you feel like you are getting close to a sale tell them you’d like to add their letter or photo to your book once they decide.    </div> <div> Good luck out there selling and thanks to everyone that has come up to me at our shows to tell me how much they are learning from the articles.  All of my past articles and show reviews are archived on my website at www.mikealbin.com.  </div> <div> This months question is from me to all of you.  It’s research for my next article.  We, as artists, get offers from art shows all the time to place advertisements in their show programs.  The ads can cost anywhere from fifty to several hundred dollars.  I’ve spent several hundred dollars for a few of those ads in certain art show programs and really haven’t noticed much return on my investment.  I’m wondering if any of you advertise in art show programs on a regular basis and feel like they are working for you?    I’m trying to find out from a wide range of artists in different price ranges if these ads are working.  I will pass on my findings in next months article.  If you are a show director and would like to ad comments to this article please feel free to contact me.  If there are other benefits to advertising in these programs that would not be apparent to the artists, please let me know about them also.  My objective here is to learn for myself and in turn pass that knowledge on to all of you.  The next time we receive one of those offers to advertise in an art show program should we jump on it immediately and send in our money or are we better off passing up that opportunity and spending our hard earned money somewhere that will be more effective.  Please email all comments, good and bad, to mike@mikealbin.com.   </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>