Soap Business - The Perfect Booth
By Al Bullington
Soap business establishment means partly deciding how to sell. One sure way to move
soap is to work the craft show circuit. Here are tips for building the perfect booth to
sell. Maybe this won't win a best booth prize, but maybe it wins your own best show prize!
Make table covers using colored sheets. You could just buy table covers. Cover to the
ground so any show will accept that. I use Lifetime 6 foot tables.
Then make a square cloth in very attractive colors to serve as an accent on top of the
main cover. It is arranged at a diagonal over the top of the table cover. You can easily
change out the accent cloth with seasons.
Then the main display is on shelves. But the shelves are just made of boards and cans.
We put down a couple of 1x2's and then lay some shelf boards on those to serve as a
bottom shelf.
Then to get the second shelf we just put a wider board on top of some collector type
olive oil cans. So, it's just a 2 tier stack of boards for shelving. Bottom boards on
1/2's to get them up off the table. Top board/shelf set back over the top shelf and
sitting on nice looking cans.
Trick is the boards are stained cherry wood so you have furniture grade material, but
it's just stacked boards. The boards have a story too... logged off our place. Most
everything about the whole deal has a story.
Then any other shelves are made sort of the same way. You can even stack soup cans
to support boards. Just drape a cloth over the soup cans and then stack on boards.
Here's the other thing.
Don't make people come in a booth unless it rains. I never go in booths. It makes me
feel trapped. Always arrange so people are outside the display so nobody feels
uncomfortable. All retail stores are layed out that way. Mall kiosks are like that. Almost
no crafters lay out booths like that. Big mistake.
Either a U-shape with you in the middle or a rectangle-shape with you in the middle is
the right way to lay out a display. You can also lay it out that way and work it from
outside with the customers.
I have soap displayed in rows on the shelves. Rows are by variety. I want people to be
able to pick up an entire armload of soap easily. Inventory is stacked right under the
table in sweater boxes.
Always price as individual bars and then as a set, like a three for a lower price. That
way virtually everybody buys in multiples of three. It's not just that they buy three.
They buy 6, 9 and so forth. It's pretty easy for most people to stack 9 bars of soap on
their forearm. It's just hard to set them down on the table to pay for them.
Always provide re-order information. Make it easy to reorder and have a catalog for
people who reorder. Don't give catalogs to everybody. It costs too much. Give everybody
who buys at a show a simple little brochure.
Follow-up after sales is as important as shows, maybe more so.
Everybody does it differently and that's why you can pick up ideas from anybody. But
then you put on your own unique twist.
Also at the corner of the booth is a picture collage showing the soap process and
everybody involved. Show you are real and this is who you are.
Soap is everywhere so why should anybody buy from your soap business? Well it is partly
because people want to support you and what you're doing. You give them the best value and
they support you.
Al Bullington and his family have been making and selling soap for years. To learn more
about how you too can start a soap making business, visit their site at
The Soap Business Kit
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