My husband and I are in total start-up mode with our business (still buidling our prototypes) and have the opportunity to participate in a State Conference in early June which is totally our target market! Can anyone tell us what we would need as a minimum to successfully participate - and not hurt our business? Is there a way to take credit card payments? Do we only take checks or cash? Do we need anything more than business cards to hand out?

We are not sure that we will actually have our website up by that time because all our effort is going into getting our prototypes finalized. We understand the importance of presenting a professional first impression and need help from any experienced business owners that participate at Club Fairs, exhibits, art fairs, etc.

Thank you everyone.

As tempted as you are to dive right in, you don't want to rush into things. If you are still working on your prototypes what will you have to sell or demonstrate? If you're pretty confident you will be ready with your prototype, you still need to allow sufficient time to develop an inventory.

How far along are you with the business end of the business? If you want to accept credit cards you need to be set up as a credit card merchant. To do that you need a business bank account. To get a business bank account you need to have your business registration or reseller ID or incorporation papers.

Having only business cards to hand out will make it obvious that you are new and not quite set up. You should have brochures or handouts and certainly you should have a website. Your customers will want to learn more about your business. Usually at a conference the attendees (potential customers) rush from booth to booth gathering info and will likely want to check you out further (website) before committing to any large orders.

Take a deep breath and slow down. Complete your start up tasks before you put your product out there prematurely.

Thank you so much for this advice. When you say it, it makes a lot of sense.

Our product is considered "handmade" and at the conference we were hoping to take in orders which would allow for a 2-3 week delivery window. It would also allow for any "checks" to clear the bank.

We would have the samples of our product on-site. But without a website for them to go to later - I understand how we may lose potential customers. We will work to at least have brochures along with our business cards so they can refer back to the product visually.

We have established our LLC with the state and have received our EIN #, but have yet to get our vendors license - not sure how long that takes in Arizona.

Again thank you - this is most helpful!

Sandie

The website is important even a quik one through places like register.com are eay. I built mine in hours www.jswank.com

I would take a laptop and use paypal.com to take credit card orders. Thats a must most people won';t have much cash and checks are a bad idea. WIth Paypal you are covered and you know you will get your money.

I would love to hear more about your product as I may like to profile it in exchange for some free marketing advice. Contact me and we can talk.

Thanks

Joanna Swank

http://www.jswank.com
info@jswank.com

Thank you Joanna for the confirmation of taking a laptop. It had ocurred to me, I think I am just not feeling like I have it together. We will be debutting our product in June (such pressure)and now I feel the website is what I really seem to be stalling with. I will check out register.com website builder which seems to be more in line with what I would like to initially have - I am also looking at Go Daddy since they are local.

I will definitely get in contact with you per your offer - thank you again for your response. I am more encouraged to get with it and get this stuff done and in place. Seems like June is approaching fast.

Sandie

You have already received some really good advice. What a few have been alluding to is making sure that you are ready and that you can present your new product well.

Is this the only show that will have your ?perfect customer? at it? If not, and you still have a few things to do to get ready? then you might want to wait until the next one.

If there are not any others coming up soon? then I would suggest that you find someone that can design a nice website for you, while you focus on your product development. I would not spend my time (Especially in the time crunch that you are in) in building a web site that I know nothing about. You want your web site to represent your product well.

If you have everything else on track as far as marketing and you have your product there for people to see and touch? then you might want to have a sign-up sheet for people who are interested. Tell them that you are just introducing this product to the market and your web site is under construction? and that you will send them a link to it just as soon as it is up. That will buy you some more time. People will be patient with you if you just tell them the truth. Plus, it will get a good contact list to market to in the future. If they put their name down on a sheet of paper? they are at least a little interested in your product. I would NOT, however, tell them that they will win something in a drawing if they put their name down. There are professional ?show goers? who fill out everything without even reading what it is. I have even seen people come through with a rubber stamp with their contact info on it and they just stamp and move on. You want good, qualified customers who want your product to fill out their information.

You really don?t even need a brochure. You can get away with a nice 8.5 x 5.5 handout if it is nicely done? and it may be easier for you at this time to do something like that.

My competition has brochures and all the other bells and whistles to dazzle the customer. I have nice, professional handouts and signs (but no bells and whistles) and I stay busy and fly around the country painting my murals, while my competition can barely stay busy? even with all the flashy handouts.

Go for it and good luck. Do we get to hear about your product?

Oh? take come comfortable shoes, some snacks (for you) and some help to relieve you from time to time.

Jeff
www.NightSkyMurals.com
(Dealerships Available)

Jeff, thank you so much for this response. I have still been stressing out over the Web site issue and as a matter of fact had it on my list of things to do today regarding more research! And if I must tell, my husband is of the same mindset as you in how we can approach this opportunity. Especially since we only have money going out at this time and zero coming in.

I do believe that there will be future (smaller) opportunities before the end of the year to show our product in person - this is just the most concentrated as it is the State Conference for families with multiples (twins, triplets, etc.)

I can get a registration/order sheet made up without a problem, and we will definitely have our product there for them to see and touch. And you are right in at least only the more interested ones will probably fill out any information.

I like the idea of buying ourselves a little more time.

Thank you, this response has definitely brought me some comfort and clearer direction.

ps - yes I will share our product, just need to get a couple of items locked up first - then I plan to share with everyone that I can!

Sandie

Good Luck!

Jeff

I just want to say THANK YOU for all the wonderful advice. We attended the conferece June 9th and learned a lot. It ended up that we have not yet gotten our web site completed but we did have (2) proto-types that we took with us. We decided that rather than try to take orders, we would utilize the opportunity solicite feedback on our product.

Since the conference was very small and 100% our niche market (mother's of twins, triplets and more within the ages 18 mths-5 years), we had them fill out our survey and offered a chance to win a free massage - pampering was the theme for the conference!

Anyway, we didn't have to have THE perfect product, we received great feedback and suggestions along with contact information, as they all wanted to be notified when the products were available for purchase!

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions, as well as "stress relief". You let me know that it doesn't have to be perfect - which we all tend to think it does. We took the chance and are definitely ahead for it.

Sandie
Rock-A-Roo For a Few, LLC