Hello @Adontelina thanks for your post. Your event sounds exciting! It is always a challenge to try to gauge event attendance. Here are a few things I've done in the best to help me be prepared:
- Can you ask the event organizers (if this is an event held before) what the historical attendance numbers are? This could help with your inventory estimates.
- Do you have historical data from past shows you've shown at? If so you could try and extrapolate. Lets say you made 50 sales for an event attendance of 500 people. You could then guess (and I do stress GUESS, because it's always not quite predicable) that if 1,000 people may attend the event, you may make 100 sales.
Really the best advice I can offer is to try to be as prepared as you can be, and try to remain flexible. Make as many items as you can, and if you have extras you'll be stocked for future events or online sales. And also reserve items as "samples" so if you do run out, you could show a display and offer to fulfill orders. So YES if you do custom work, or made-to-order items, I'd have a way for customers to place an order with you.
Also have signage and business cards with your website and ordering info listed. A few other tips...have slips or a way for customers to signup for your mailing list with their email. You could also have a raffle item and use that to collect emails (but check with event organizers and local/state agencies because sometimes raffles are regulated based on where you live.) And be sure you be clear in your email collection form that the customer is giving permission for you to email them (just to cover your bases with legal issues in spam and emailing.) Use in-person events to collect as much info and data as you can !!!!!! this is super important for marketing later. You can use Square Marketing and Loyalty to reach past and potential customers, but if you don't have customer emails, it makes it more difficult.
And track your inventory and item sales. Often creatives tend to shy away from doing things like spreadsheets, but these can be your friends in figuring out what your best sellers are and what market events work best for you. Good luck to you and please let us know how your event turns out! I'm excited for you!!
