Setting up at my first show

[James Wark]

Well, I have decided its time to attend my first event to show my engraving. It will be a Cowboy Action Shooters Appreciation day shoot. This is the area I would like to concentrate my engraving on. Any thoughts on what I might expect from the attendees. Should I have good photos or just use a laptop with a slide show. I will have 2 engraved firearms for display. I know many of you have set up at various shows and maybe from your experiance I can avoid some unpleasant experiances.
Thank you for your time
Jim

 

[pilkguns]

Jim,
most Cowboy shoot vendor space is going to be outdoors, under your own tent or a provided one. Given the bright and often eneven lighting, you will be better served with some 8x10 or larger prints rather than a monitor screen for customer viewing. The prints will go quite well with your two finished pieces. Other than that, numerous business practice discussion on here will cover the customer relations part of the equasion. Good luck with it!

 

[monk]

i've never been to this specific type event, but used to go to gun shows. take as many physical samples as poss. lots of bizz cards. you'll meet a lot of very interesting people that will make your pockets tremble with excitement thinking of a possible flood of cash coming in. fotos & the laptop are cool too. just be careful to not bite off more than you are able to chew, so to speak. i'm referring mainly to satisfying a client's request for a work deadline. if you're a newbie at this, try to be very upfront with clients about meeting their time expectations. a valuable tool for me i've found is what i call a foto cd. i keep the master copy on my hard drive and add to it whenever needed. then i burn copies to hand out to prospective clients. they are free to keep the cd or pass it around among friends. this is really not that expensive, and it allow people to view my stuff when it's most convenient for them.

 

[FL-Flinter]

Being in the gun business (not graving), I can tell you that people like to see the real thing more so than a picture. You have two completed guns, make them the center of attention, have a nice display rack that lets them stand out. Many shooters are all about "bragging rights" but CAS shooters lead the pack, how much they paid and how long it took to get it done. Even if you can get something right in and have it done quickly, always tell 'em you're real busy but will put them on the list and get them in as soon as possible. Never give a definite time quote, always give the "about" or "approximately", this buys you time for unexpected things and keeps the customer from being disappointed / upset.

Once you get their attention with the guns, then they'll be more interested in seeing pictures. Being that you're selling the engraving and not the gun, enlarged drawings showing the detail not readily visible to the eye will work better than pictures of the actual work. You don't need to flood the customers with data, couple guns, three or four drawings, then use the pictures of completed work only as supplimental after the customer has already hooked, all you gotta do is reel 'em in.

 

[JJ Roberts]

Jim,
After doing 32 years of gunshows I would suggest if you are going to bring any guns to keep them locked up in a case where they can be viewed, and no one can get at them. I have a variety of engraved gun parts, floor plates, patch boxes, shot gun side locks, muzzle loader locks, and a couple of small pistols which I keep in the case. I have a looseleaf with photos of my work, pen & ink and pencil drawings, and complimentary letters from customers. Also business cards. No one gets passed by table without getting a business card. I give a live demonstration at the show with hammer and chisel and push tools, never ever bring power assist tools to a gunshow...I want to show the basic handcraft of engraving. Gun shows have been very successful for me over the years. I only do a few a year. After all this time I am pretty well established in the gun community. The SASS crowd I have found only want their names on the back straps of their pistols or the warning label taken off their Rugers, and the only thing they spend money on is clothes, and quick draw holsters. Now for the trap & skeet folks..if you go there with jewelry they'll spend, and you might get lucky and get a trigger guard to engrave. Hope this will help you.

Yours truly,
JJ Roberts
School of Artistic Engraving
Manassas, VA
www.angelfire.com/va2/engraver

 

[James Wark]

Thank you all for the response. This information is very helpfull and just what I was looking for.

 

[thekoabenchgoldsmith]

Aloha Jim,
If you haven't been to your event, yet, this might help too.

I found in 10+ years of craftfairs in Honolulu two things that really helped me get people:
1. Come to my booth.
2. Stay long enough to get a good look at my work.
3. Provoke enough interest to get them to talk.
were the following.

1. A 24" X 32" board with 12 frames showing the general steps to my work process. It wasn't elaborate, but it showed that all the work I did was done by hand, and that I knew enough about it to sort of show what I did.

2. A small display of the tool I used. This wasn't exactly representational because I brought gravers in wooden handles, chisels, and chasing hammers instead of my Gravermeister handpieces. But it gave people something interesting to look at. I also had all the tools setup, sharp and polished as if they were the tool I used. I couold then show customers about the features of my tools and explain why my work looked the way it did in relation to the tools I used.

3. A small bowl of inexpensive candies, like ****e drops, or the gummy bears things. This actually did more for my business than anything else when it came to getting people to stop and look.

Good luck at your event.

Aloha,
Robert Booth
The Koa Bench Goldsmith

 

[thekoabenchgoldsmith]

hmmm...should have said ****e drops...don't know why it came out ****e...

anyways...

 

[thekoabenchgoldsmith]

hahahah...
I'll try it this way...

S P I C E drops

 

[monk]

i personally think that's really sneaky and reprehensible. my wife has this nice metal candy dish i've been thinkin about engraving. hmmmmm. so what do you do, keep a 10 pound "resupply" bag under the table ?hmmm. what candy seems to be best here ?

 

[James Wark]

Hi Robert,
Thanks for the great ideas, I like the poster board concept of work in progress. And the candy dish always gets me. The show was last weekend, it went pretty well. Met lots of nice cowboy and cowgirl folks. Some where interested and other where not. Overall it was nice to get out there. I got to watch alot of the shooting action, there was one guy that cleared his stage in under 19 seconds without a miss, thats 10 rifle shots, 10 handgun, and 4 shotgun, it was amazing. Thanks again to all who responded, its great advice.
Jim Wark