I have enough "wall inventory" now that I'm thinking about requesting corner spaces or double spaces in some shows.  For those of you who made the switch from single spaces: did paying for the extra space pay off in extra sales?

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  • This really depends on what you sell. I have a corner for more years than I can recall and double booths at my best 3 shows. The cost of a double can pay off but its more (at least for my sales ) about how good the show is as far as how many people attend and are buying- the more  people the more it makes sense for me.I have been at this a long time so its a learned over time deal. Also as many have said it depends on 3 things-location -location and yes location.

    Mark

  • Hey Geoff, this may be an apples and orange reply since my product is completely different from yours. There is one out door show that I have been doing for about 12 years and about 5 years ago I switched to a double and my revenue increase has consistently been up by about 35 percent since I made the switch. But the one caveat to that is I am able to add more variety to my inventory. I always have a double booth at indoors shows and with the exception of a few shows which have turned out to be dogs no matter what space I had the increase in revenue has generally always made it worth while.

    Since I do shows by myself I am not a fan of corner spaces for loss prevention reasons. It is much more difficult to keep an eye on things.
    • Thanks, Rich! Appreciate the numbers.  :-)  And that's an interesting insight about the loss prevention issue.

  • Geoff - you've gotten some great advice from others who have the 2D art.  From a jeweler's perspective, we never request a double booth, it would look horribly empty.  Last fall we had a "no show" in the booth next to us so we moved one of our counters out to help fill in the space.  However, at that point it was a bit out of line of site for either of us, we spent half the show worrying about what might "walk away" due to 5 finger discounts. 

    We do have shows where we request corner booths, however, for the really crowded, busy shows, we sometimes prefer the inline booth.  Why?  Less worry about theft and the potential for someone to bump into our displays and knock a glass case over.  We used to request a corner at one of our best shows, we had an impromptu dance performance outside of our booth 2 years ago and I ended up standing in front of one of our glass cases to keep the audience from backing into the glass case and knocking it off the stand.  That was the last year for a corner booth at that show.  We participate in a few art and wine festivals and I always want an inline at those events, again due to worry of the "happy patrons" being more likely to stumble into my glass cases, for us that's just more problematic with a corner booth.

    As far as sales go, we haven't found that it makes a tremendous amount of difference.  I'd rather be in an inline booth in a high traffic area of a show than a corner booth in less visible area.

    I will say, we really like corner booths for our shows in Aug. in North Idaho where the temps are in the 90's, much more comfortable and better airflow if we're not surrounded on 3 sides with other booths.

  • There are only a couple of shows where I go for a larger booth. One is Talbott Street where I get an extra 8 feet. It's a good spot with an adjacent tree to shade one side. I put up a 15 foot tent with a couple of interior walls 5 feet long running front to back. Both outside walls are open, so I'm able to get about 72 feet of wall space out of it. It's worth the extra expense and the booth is opened up and arranged thematically like a gallery.

    At Penrod, I get a double booth, and break each booth into entirely different bodies of work. I use two EZ-Up's zip tied together with propanels dividing off the middle and a corner door for each. The doors are next to each other where the legs are tied together. Each side has it's own flip bins. I put the landscape/cityscape work on one side, and the figurative and alternative process work on the other. Most patrons aren't even aware it's the same photographer unless they ask me something on one side and then wander over to the other side and have a quation over there. On that particular show, the ROI has been breakeven for the last two or three years, and it's debatable if I'll continue it, although initially it did pay for itself and then some. The advantage would be being able to display different aspects of your work without diluting it.

    • Very thoughtful arrangement! I'm not contemplating adding a new genre to what I'm already doing, but I'm moving to larger and larger work (when I started, my typical size was 16x20; now it's 20x30, with a few pieces 30x40 and up), and the 30 linear feet of display space is starting to feel a bit constricting. 

      • You may have to go "skyscraper" to get enough wall space. I've seen a few tents go past 8 and 10 feet height to get the big pieces in. I saw one in Chicago a few years ago that must have been 12 feet tall. The step ladder he used had to be an 8 footer as I walked past it. As I recall most of the work was large with 2 pieces covering the width of a tent side.
  • My main reason for going double or corner is that it increases retail traffic flow. Simply said, you can get more people into the booth. At a very large show, it makes a difference, especially if the show has a loop, like Bayou City Memorial Park.

    My rolling browse bins were designed with a double booth in mind. One bin per 10x10 space. While I can configure a single booth with both bins, I can't get as many people into it, and once it's full, it's full. Having a longer space translates into more customers, more conversations, more sales.

    You can get almost as much art on a corner space as you can on a double. With an open double booth you have four walls to display on. With a corner, you also have four walls, counting the outside wall. Returns, french walls and front facing panels can help.

    And contrary to popular conjecture, it does help to protect your space with "rooms". I know several artists who setup this way, and it has helped sales. Especially for high end work, it can help you to isolate a customer and have a more private conversations.

    A double or a corner can let you have more than one way in and out of the booth. Defining your retail entrance and exit paths and the flow within the space can help you decide if it makes sense to go with a double.

    For me, it's not about inventory. I got plenty of that. I make too much stuff. It's about how many people I can interface with in a single day. That's what creates sales. It's not the quantity of the work, but the quality. Having too much on the walls is actually detrimental to sales.

    • Great responses, all!  Keep 'em coming! 
      Jim: Do you work shows by yourself, or do you have a helper?

      • My wife Karyn does most of the shows with me. We don't always do a double, sometimes a corner, sometimes just an inline single.

        301648219?profile=originalKaryn Kozo, winner of the 2012 Golden Dolly Award for Best Assistant,

        2012 Arts, Beats & Eats

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