Marketing with home art parties

[tom suter]

I had decided a while back to start doing home parties for my jewelry and try to stay out of stores and having to raises prices up to pay for commisons. My daughter had some in Chicago and did okay but it was actually the first for me. The lady who hosted this though did it different from what I was expecting. She billed it as an Art Party she wanted me to bring a few more items than just the jewelry such as bowls vases and cheese platters. She had this setup as an open house and not a set start time.

It was in an older house that really looked good with all the items set out. I got over there at 3:30 people started coming over at 5:30 until about 8:30. The lady felt by having an art party she was able to get some men to stop by that otherwise would not have been interested in just jewelry. She had several bottle of wine that were drained (so I got bottles to slump) but it went over really good. I did close to $700 and got a couple of orders out of it also so close to $900 by the completion of order work.

The lady who hosted I gave a $15 credit for having the party and a 10% of the sales as credit to use on glass purchases. I had made some pendants that were just what I called plain jane just black and red or turquoise, white nothing fancy no dichroic. If someone brought a guest they got to pick one of them as a free gift and then I had dangle earrings that they could buy to match it. 3 out of 4 bought the earrings. The woman was really impressed with getting the free pendant.

All in all it went really good with another art party set up for a couple of weeks and another jewelry party in beginning of March. I don't expect all of them to be as good as that one, I was hoping on doing around $300.

For me it seems to be a really nice alternative to a store or gallery a relax atmosphere and everyone seemed to be lose ( I will for now on bring a couple of bottles of wine) and enjoying themself and really no expensive setup fee.

Just thought I would share if somone is looking for another way of marketing their stuff.

[Suzan]

I'd very be interested in having an open house in my own home, but to date, my contact list for customers is tiny. How did your host determine who to invite? Colleagues, acquaintances, or did he/she advertize for anyone to come?

Cheers,
Suzan