Crabby Bass

[Denny Welch]

Hey Chuck...

How did the show go this past weekend?  Any surprises?  Any "Lessons Learned"?

[BigHawgBaits]

I am a bit curious myself I have a show coming up on the 22nd-24th. This will be my first show. Any and all pointers would be welcome from ya

[TheDreamer]

That "show" wouldn't happen to be in Tulsa OK would it?


Drew

[BigHawgBaits]

I really wish it was but nope just a local show in Washington

[CrabbyBass]

Hey Denny!  Thanks for asking!  I was going to make a post yesterday, but was not sure if anyone really wanted to know.  The show went great!  It was really busy.  They had 3600 people come through on Saturday.  I do not know how many came through on Sunday.  We met a lot of great people doing the same thing as us.  They were awesome as far as sharing techniques and giving contacts to us to help us out.  We sold 150 bags of lures at the show and have orders coming in from people who were at the show.  We learned that having a salesman on our pro staff team was very beneficial.  He really knew how to sell the lures to people. Be sure to have a lot of the popular colors on hand as people are always looking for them.  Don't take rejection personally, keep on selling to the next guy.  Make sure your booth is set up before the show opens and take the extra time to double check everything and relax for a few.  Once those doors open, you don’t get a free minute.  Try to make a mental image of your booth in your head and see what the first bags are on each hook and watch for thieves.  You have to step out of your comfort zone and talk to people.  Say hello to everyone that passes by your booth.  We made a ton of sales to guys who were not going to stop at our booth, but stopped and looked because we said hello to them.  Eye contact goes a long way too.  Know your products and how to fish with them.  People ask some of the strangest questions.  Share stories of how you have fished your lures and caught fish with them.  The one thing we didn’t have and should’ve had was pictures of fish that were caught using our lures.  I don’t think we lost sales because of it, but it would have been nice to have some up.  Lastly, make sure your booth is NOT next to a guy that sells jigs because you will spend all your profits over there.  LOL!  At least we did.  At the same point it worked out well because we were able to direct people to his booth to buy things to use with our plastics and he did the same thing back to us.  I attached a couple of pics of our booth.  I hope this helps anyone doing a show.  Thanks again for asking!

         

[412BaitCo]

Very nice!

[ctom]

There ya go! That looks professional.

[CrabbyBass]

Thanks guys!  Thanks to my buddy, forum member, Wilks19, his father in law and a couple other guys.  I had a daddy/daughter dance the night of set up, so I missed out.  They did a great job setting up.

[WALLEYE WACKER]

crabby bass Your both looks great.What was the top two Baits that went over well. I'm shear they all were. Mike

[Botanophilia]

The aquarium geek in my wants to know... what size is that tank???  Looks like an odd size.

Booth looks good, glad it was a success.

[CrabbyBass]

Thanks guys!  The two top sellers for us were senkos and the CCM swim toad.  Also, if you look at the pics of our display, you can see blue bins.  We had our whole line of lures in them so people could pick and choose a dozen random lures.  That went over huge.  We sold around 60 bags of those.  We got the fish tank from a friend.  It seemed to be a 20 gallon tall.  That worked out great too.  The kids were drawn to it which in turn brought in their parents and we made sales to them.  It gave people the opportunity to see the action of the lures underwater.  We made quite a few sales because people liked the action of a certain lure underwater.  We also had a little piece of carpet on our table and displayed all of our lures.  The ones you see in the pics are rigged on hooks to show people rigging options.  Just make sure your hooks are protected from kid’s hands.  Later we pulled out the whole line and people liked being able to see and hold the lures in their hands.  Thanks again guys!

[Mic]

WOW, WOW, WOW Crabby that whole set up looks good!  Where did you get your hanging wall.  My son aka "color genius" and I were thinking of doing a show or two also. 

[CrabbyBass]

Thanks Mic!  I really appreciate your compliment.  We bought the banner from a local guy.  We told him what we wanted, he made us a template for approval and made it up for us.  It is a 2' x 6' banner.  The price was really reasonable too.  He also prints our t-shirts at a great price.  You can see them hanging in the booth too. 

[BigHawgBaits]

Great looking booth and some great tips for us just starting the show thing. I hope to have a little of the same success in a couple weeks at the Wenatchee Valley Sportsman Show. Wenatchee? where is that? We are a little town in central Washington State so I don't think we will have the volume you had but it should be a great learning experience non the less.

[CrabbyBass]

Thanks BHB!  I hope you do well.  Just remember talk to anyone and everyone.  Even if they don't fish plastics, your sales pitch may make them start.  Be sure to let us all know how your show goes.