Better Living Show Results

Unfortunately our participation at the Better Living Show in Halifax was not a success. Less than 5000 people came through the doors and that was far less than the expected attendance. Those who did attend the show seemed to be disappointed with the overall appearance and types of vendors, thus they were not in a buying mood. In the end, sales did not cover the cost of the booth. We had additional frustration as the wireless Internet system did not seem to work with either of our laptops making the few credit card sales difficult. We will have to look at that in the future.

We had positive comments on our display from other vendors and the publice was very interested in the products which was a good sign. The alpaca duverts drew good interest and hopefully this will result in future sales.

Things that we learned:

• Bring your own dolly/cart to move your boxes. Makes setup and take down much easier as it can be done in only a couple of trips from the truck. We found a good one a Canadian tire.
• The 10x10 space was a little small.
• Bring more pictures of the alpacas.
• Everyone liked the box of raw fleece that they could touch.
• Need a rack so you can hang certain items.
• Create a tally sheet so that keeping track of cash sales on small items is easy. Hard to really know how many finger puppets were sold.
• You definitely need two people all the time so that you can take a break. Caroline had a friend help on Saturday but was all alone on Sunday as I had to many things to do back on the farm.

An unsuccessful 3 day show make a long weekend with not enough rest. I am sure Caroline will have more to add.