The Spa Party At My Store

Well this past Thursday night I held a spa party at my store. This event was to announce the new venture of mine of marketing my products thru a home party events. I sort of did it at the store to give myself experience doing a spa event and also of course to generate sales.

To get people to know about the event I did 3 things. I mailed invites, I advertised in a local paper and did an e-mail and fax blitz thru my chamber.

I've been very lax in accumulating customers names and addresses but I did have a few so I mailed them out with an rsvp, The ad in the local paper cost me $57 (it was an 1/8 of a page) and then spent another $50 to have our chamber do an e-mail and fax blitz.

So first to the advertising dollars spent. Almost all that came, came from the chamber e-mail and fax. No one mentioned the flyer or no one rsvp'd from the mailed invites. The $50 for the chamber was well spent and I'd do it again in a heart beat. I never did that type of advertising before with the chamber. Most of those who came from the chamber probably thought this would be another place to network which is okay they also got to see my store and see what I do.

Even though I don't think anyone came from my mailing I will still collect names, addresses and e-mail addresses. But doing it just seems to get tucked away somewhere in the back of my brain, and it surfaces after the fact. Which means I didn't collect names of those who attended. I'll have to do some investigating to find out who was who and send off some thank you cards and to remind them of my new direction.

I'm Italian and I was brought up with the importance of food and when we entertain we always worry that we don't have enough food. We could have enough food to feed a small army and only expect to entertain 10 we'd still worry. It's just a given that is what we do. I'm sure other nationalities have the same issue. So I knew the day of the event we were going to have alot of people and my worries starting surfacing. We don't have enough food, we won't have enough punch, oh my!! So I worried alone and then brought my daughter into it and then she worried too. So we figured we'd double the recipe for the punch and then we bought some chips and salsa and prayed that all would be okay.

Not once did I worry about my presentation, demonstration, not once, just worried about the food. So time came and the people poured in and we dished out food and drinks and then I was confused and stumped about what to do. So I jumped right into doing hand spa treatments and I had most of their attention. My focus was on them having a good time, they did but I didn't sell product. I just wanted them to have a good time. Half way into the hand spa treatments I realized that I wasn't doing any sellling so I started telling them prices. That was a half hearted attempt to correct a situation I created.

So the place started to clear out, my daughter had been doing the register and I asked her okay how'd we do. "Not good" she said. "What????" I said How could that be since the party at my home with far less people had generated such good sales.

Nothing should be a mistake that you go home and beat yourself up over. It should just be a learning process. I made a major mistake for this show but my friends who were still at my store discussed what went wrong.

What went wrong was I never discussed our products sitting so pretty on the shelves and tables. They were sitting there waiting for me to describe all their glorious details. So how were people to know that these were things that they probably shouldn't live without if I didn't tell them. That was my biggest mistake of the night. Plus there were other smaller details that I need to correct.

At the beginning I did have their undivided attention but I didn't have a script, I didn't know where I was going. I knew I had to feed them and I worried about that. I knew I had to offer them drinks and I worried about that, but the real purpose to sell them on my store and products I didn't do anything about that. I should of set up a structured detailed outline of what to do. I now know that I should of approached this with a goal in mind and feeding and offering drinks wasn't it. So when you know the end result you can kind of work backwards and set up a program to achieve your goal. This is how it will go next time. Stop back again I'll keep you posted on how upcoming events are going.