Well, we've had a few days of rest since our Sunday outing to our first outside sales event of the 2026 fall season.
Sadly, things did not go nearly as well as we'd hoped and, in fact, the event was quite disappointing... at least from a sales standpoint. We ended up taking in just about enough money to cover the cost of our vendor fee, travel expenses and having a bit of lunch and that was about all.
It wasn't exactly the worst event we'd ever been part of, but it currently ranks 3rd from the bottom in a long list of events we have participated in, going back all the way to 2013. It was a bit surprising, given that attendance was actually quite good.
Needless to say, it is very unlikely that we will be back next year unless something radically changes.
On the positive side, we were definitely blessed with a beautiful day although it was rather windy... which is tricky when you are trying to anchor a 10x10 foot pop-up tent in a grassy field!
As mentioned, the event was also very well attended and I'm pretty sure the number of visitors numbered in the thousands so that was cool. However the people in attendance were far more of a "dress up and be seen" crowd than a "shopping" crowd.
In talking to several of our fellow vendors only one out of the six or seven I got in conversation with "made bank," while the rest were thoroughly disappointed by their sluggish results. I have a feeling we would have done much better if we had been selling smoked turkey legs rather than painted rocks!
But you have to try everything, at least once! We were skeptical the first time we went to a UFO and paranormal conference, and it subsequently turned out to be (consistently, over several years) our very best audience ever.
In retrospect one of the lessons also learned from this is that we still don't really like outdoor shows. They require more extensive fixtures and they require bringing a tent and ground cover to handle bumpy and sometimes wet surfaces and we really have gotten very cushy in our old age and prefer indoor events.
So the quest continues to be to find more suitable indoor events and conferences where setting up consists of little more than having three tables and a backdrop, and where people are more oriented to attending the event because of what the vendors have to offer as opposed to as a personal performance.
We now have a bit of a break of about eight weeks until we start doing the holiday shows and it will be nice that stock and display materials are already pretty well organized from this event, which will save us some organizational time later.
I now will go back to focusing on making sure that the online shop is up to snuff and initiating my more thorough online marketing plan.
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If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2026.09.30 AS-TXT-407/377
