Let’s talk about Priest River

Today I ran in to town to catch the annual Lioness Christmas Fair at the Junior High School gymnasium.

The gym was full, and some vendors had even been placed in the hallway, but one thing was missing – shoppers! Perhaps that’s because I didn’t get there until 2 in the afternoon and it had started at 9 a.m. The serious shoppers probably arrived early to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

Anyway I hope so. Packing up your wares and hauling them into a building for display is no easy task. In fact it’s darned hard work. And one of the vendors told me that the show was over at 4 and they had instructions to be completely out of there by 5:30. No fun at all after getting up early to be there and then hanging around all day. At 4 it would have been nice for them to take a break – maybe even go outside for a breath of fresh air and a walk around the building to stretch their legs.

I saw plenty of interesting things, but I left them all there – all except the fresh nuts from the PEO – I can never resist those! The thing is, there were items that I thought might make good gifts for some of the people on my list, but not being in an impulsive mood, and not quite being in the holiday mood yet either, I just shook my head and wished that I might have the opportunity to run into those items again later. But of course that won’t happen, because I didn’t know the people or how to contact them later.

Seeing that same thing happen at the Christmas Bazaar I attended in Spokane last year got me to thinking about the marketing opportunity these folks are missing. Borrowing a simple internet marketing method would put them in touch with every person who stopped by their booths and showed some interest, but they aren’t using it. In fact, very few even had business cards to pick up.

Maybe some of those vendors only want to sell at shows and wouldn’t like having to package and ship their wares. In that case, attending shows is the right thing for them to do. Otherwise, they should read the report I wrote after seeing this happen last year. More information about that is right here.

If you have a friend who exhibits at these shows and wants to sell more, please forward this post to them. In this time of financial insecurity, it only makes sense to to market, and market well.

Meanwhile, for anyone who has moved away and not been back for 20 years or so… the photo below is the Priest River Junior High School. I’ll bet you thought it was the High School, didn’t you?