Getting ready for Mountain QuiltFest ’21

April 26, 2021 / Kat /

So…

its been 15 months since we’ve set up a booth at a retail show (the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, Va), and since then we have published FOUR new patterns which is two more new patterns than we’ve ever brought to a show at one time.

In order to properly showcase these new designs to maximum advantage, I need to make some bigtime modifications on the booth layout we used for Houston 2019, as well as Road2Ca and MAQF in 2020 (as shown at left).

The layout at left is what we used in Houston 2019 and also both Road2Ca and MAQF 2020.
But if you check out the layout at right, which will be using at Mountain Quilt Fest,
I think you’ll notice that its almost verbatim a mirror image of our previous layout!
Which probably means that I’ve pretty much maximized the horizontal opportunities of this single booth for us

Which probably means if we need more display space…
we’re pretty much going to have to find it
VERTICALLY!

So the photo at left is the way we’ve set up our zipper display for years but here’s the thing… we really don’t sell very many separating zippers (circled in red), SO…. I’m thinking “why should these items get to live in such valuable real estate, right? Therefore, for this show I’ll be setting it up like the photo at right. I’ll be displaying our 10inch zips in a double row (5 zippers on top of 5) alongside the 20inch zips followed by the the 22inch double-headed zippers. Of course we’ll bring a limited number of 12″ & 24″ separating zippers in case anyone is shopping for these, but I would prefer to utilize this precious “real estate” for faster moving products and as you can see, this change makes room for five more patterns AND our nine newest & fastest moving hardware items!
And once again in the photo at left is our current set up for our Pattern. Fabric & Notions Kit area, but here’s the deal… we also display our newest bag samples in front of this display which in past shows tends to hide the bottom-row items (as in the picture at left above). So… another benefit of the big changes we made in our zipper display area, is that now we can cut our pattern displayed here down to five from the usual 7, which leaves room for us to add 12 of our 16 Notions Kit tags. and then most importantly, the lower 12 inches or so of this display is wide open so that our bag samples can be the “star” without blocking out other products!

So will this work for us?

Only time will tell… but in just a few weeks we’ll know the answer when we try these new display ideas out at the Mountain Quilt Fest! So do stay tuned because following this show we’ll give you a complete and honest review of how this new display either worked or bombed for us!

And now, it’s YOUR turn!

There’s still time for us to tweek this display if any of you have some bright ideas for ways to improve it and if you’re going to be anywhere in the vicinity of Pigeon Forge, TN during the first week of May, we’d LOVE for you to stop by and say HELLO! And remember, we love reading your comments and answering your questions too, so please feel free to leave either or both in the space provided below.

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Kat

2 Comments

  1. Patty K Howe on April 27, 2021 at 5:49 am

    Please make sure people can see, but not take off with your samples. It has bee so long, there might be a sticky finger or two…..



    • Kat on April 27, 2021 at 1:03 pm

      Thanks and yes that has happened to us. We have unfortunately had to use a system of elastic bungees to tether them to our tables. Its a shame that our customers have to be treated like this because of very few who take things they shouldnt. 🙁