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Neve

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So, I'm one day into a two day fair. I figured I never made much money selling single bars so I stayed up late last night making gift baskets.

All day sold single bars and guest sized bars and not one basket! I was counting on the basket sales to actually make some decent money.

Any ideas for tomorrow to get these baskets moving?

People were grabbing soaps out of the boxes on the front right corner - oddly enough snapping up all the artists bars and salt bars. No-one ever showed any interest in the artist bars before!

I've made my table fee back, and lunch, tomorrow I need to basically sell all of it. It's the only market I plan on doing.

ImageUploadedBySoap Making1416119751.535161.jpgImageUploadedBySoap Making1416119765.708508.jpgImageUploadedBySoap Making1416119811.752827.jpg
 
I think that open baskets are a good way to go - they can put a certain number of soaps of their choice in to it and get a discount on the price of the individual bars.

So if they only like two type of bar, they fill the basket with them (you set the number of bars permissible).
 
I think the look of the baskets could be better. Personally I want a basket to be beautiful and useful later on. From these pictures it looks like they are in cheap, disposable food containers? And I think that letting your customers fill the basket would help also.
 
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Count your blessing you have made your booth fee and lunch. Baskets have never worked for me. I just take tissue and white handle bags in case someone wants to put something together. Hopefully tomorrow will be good for you
 
I too have never had much luck with baskets. The exception is regular customers making special orders. Good luck on your second day. Hope you sell a lot.
 
I've never done well with pre-made baskets, either. People want you to change out "this" scent for that "scent" and whatnot.

This year I teamed up with a local gift basket company. They made me a "demo basket" for free and I put their flyers in my customer bags. I tell people they can take their products to this basket company, point to the "demo" and say "this is how amazing your products will look!". Gets me off the hook when customers ask if I do gift baskets and the basket company is getting a few orders from my customers.

Plus, when I have had baskets made up at my table, the customers take WAY too long in deciding what they want to buy.
 
I'm another one who has never done well with baskets. I've never been able to figure it out. I made sure they were really pretty and well priced.....and still they didn't move. People didn't mention anything about not having a choice of what was in the basket, but I don't know, maybe open baskets are the way to go, if you're going to do it.I think I've only sold one, that's right one basket ever. And they're hard to transport, so I don't even bother any more.

What has sold better for me, but not by much, is gift sets. Four of a kind.....like four beer soaps, boxed, with a bow. My single bars fly off the table, but I haven't been able to pin down why the others don't sell. You'd think that at busy holiday time, a complete gift, with a bow, that you just need to add a gift tag to, would be popular. Go figure! (shoulder shrug)

I do sometimes offer a nice wooden soap dish, with two bars of soap, tied with a bow, and those sell fairly well, but people do want to untie the bow and switch out the soaps for others, so it's better to have one done up so that they can see what it will look like, and make them up at their request. Good luck to you!
 
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navigator9 said:
I'm another one who has never done well with baskets. I've never been able to figure it out. I made sure they were really pretty and well priced.....and still they didn't move. People didn't mention anything about not having a choice of what was in the basket, but I don't know, maybe open baskets are the way to go, if you're going to do it.I think I've only sold one, that's right one basket ever. And they're hard to transport, so I don't even bother any more.

What has sold better for me, but not by much, is gift sets. Four of a kind.....like four beer soaps, boxed, with a bow. My single bars fly off the table, but I haven't been able to pin down why the others don't sell. You'd think that at busy holiday time, a complete gift, with a bow, that you just need to add a gift tag to, would be popular. Go figure! (shoulder shrug)

I do sometimes offer a nice wooden soap dish, with two bars of soap, tied with a bow, and those sell fairly well, but people do want to untie the bow and switch out the soaps for others, so it's better to have one done up so that they can see what it will look like, and make them up at their request. Good luck to you!
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I am totally with you on this. A few times I tried putting a bar on a soap dish in a nice gold bottom clear box with a ribbon. Did not sell but a couple of them. I simply gave up on it. I do have success at selling our marshmallow and our decorative glycerin soaps in a christmas coffee cup. They go over quite well during the season. But my cp soap sells best as single bars so they can pick and choose. A couple of yrs ago I watched a poor girl sell 3 gift boxes in 2 days. It was all she had and it simply did not work for her although her gift boxes were put together and were beautiful. They all had matching fragrances and she had decorated the insides of the boxes with pearls, christmas decorations etc and all color matched. I felt extremely sorry for her
 
I'm afraid that's how the season is going to go. I had a big craft fair yesterday (my biggest money maker for the year), and I sold not much more than half of what I sold last year. I was really bummed!
 
And that is exactly what happened... I made half of what I did last year :( I didn't have soaps last year I had headbands and hats at a higher price point than single bars of soap. So although I had probably more sales, I made way less money. I was counting on the gift baskets and there was just no interest in them. I wanted to at least get back the $300-odd dollars I spent on supplies and then some. Biggest market of the year, a market a lot of people go to, and total fail. Ugh.

HorseCreek said:
I'm afraid that's how the season is going to go. I had a big craft fair yesterday (my biggest money maker for the year), and I sold not much more than half of what I sold last year. I was really bummed!
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Never sold a gift basket. I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to make them because I don't even like buying gift baskets of any kind. Ha.
 
I did gift baskets as a job for a while and sorry to say, your baskets need to be a lot more presentable than they are to get sales. Doing flat trays just doesn't work and they need to be more up market.
 
Relle said:
I did gift baskets as a job for a while and sorry to say, your baskets need to be a lot more presentable than they are to get sales. Doing flat trays just doesn't work and they need to be more up market.
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And THAT'S why I refer people out :). Making baskets is one skill I simply do not possess. I am always amazed at what talented people can do with a basket and a bunch of product.

My basket making skill stops at a popcorn bowl with free movie passes and microwave popcorn, LOL.
 
cmzaha said:
I am very sorry to hear your market was not better for you. It is so darn discouraging. And who said the economy is turning around....:(
Click to expand...

The federal government keeps telling us it is turning around. You know...those folks that want their party to go back into power after these elections. I am not picking on one party or the other. If the other party were in control, they would be telling us the same thing.
 
I wasn't able to find cheap baskets and I had half a day to put it all together. We were required to have some holiday theme on our tables.
 
You don't need a basket as such to put together a gift presentation. You can use any form that will hold your goods - bowls, any kitchen type equipment etc. you just need height at the back and then layer it forward. Plenty of shredding will do this and if you don't have shredding use tissue, just bulk it up to make it look full.

I can usually get a basket done in 15 mins, but that's with a lot of practice, so with 1/2 day - I would say 4 - 6 would have been enough to cover you for a Holiday theme.
 
I went to a craft fair last weekend and saw some great holiday themed ideas. One person had combined two candy canes with a wooden soap dish and a bar of soap on top all packaged together with a bow to look like a sleigh. They looked lovely, were a reasonable price and were selling like hot cakes. They also wrapped bars of soap in brown facecloths and stuck on eyes and a nose with pipe cleaner antlers to look like Rudolph. They were selling well too. Perhaps you could try some gift packages that are cheaper and smaller than a basket.
 

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