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Marketing
Your Fair
Now you have to decide how to market your fair, initially to
potential exhibitors and later to buyers. This means setting an
advertising budget, as well as perhaps doing a mail-out to
dealers, press releases for trade publications and giving out
leaflets at places like Portobello Road and Camden Passage for a
London fair, other fairs, with the permission of the organisers,
and antiques markets and centres.
You will
probably find that antiques dealers are not beating a path to your
door. The sad truth is that this is a very competitive market with
a large number of fairs of all kinds taking place every weekend
and many midweek as well. Getting exhibitors will be hard work and
you will have to market your fair very well to succeed. Many
dealers will wait until the last minute before they book. This is
because they want to avoid paying a deposit and, in the case of a
new organiser, they will also want to see that you are advertising
the fair widely so there will be a good attendance by potential
buyers.
While they are
waiting they will be talking to each other and, make no mistake,
word of mouth in the antiques trade can kill a fair. If you have
problems like not enough bookings, do not be tempted to confide
your worries to a sympathetic antiques dealer. They might not tell
everybody they can contact but, remember, the trade loves gossip
so the chances are the news will spread more quickly than if you
took an advertisement on national radio.
While you are
trying to market your fair to potential exhibitors you will also
have to start advertising it to visitors. It is in your own
interests to get a good gate (gate = the number of people visiting
the fair) because you will charge them all for admission
usually based on the number of exhibitors and the quality of the
antiques. You also need a good gate because the more visitors, the
better the chances of the majority dealers selling enough to make
a profit. If the fair is very quiet the dealers will be very
unhappy and they will make sure you are unhappy too.
You will need
to advertise in the majority of the trade press, local newspapers
and, if it is a high quality fair, magazines like World of
Interiors or Homes and Gardens. With a small fair
attracting people from around 20 to 30 miles, the advertising
budget would probably be around £2000 to £5000 (approximately
$3000 to $7500). A high quality fair hoping to attract people from
much further afield could well spend £10,000 to £20,000 ($15,000
to $30,000). With a first fair, the upper end of the estimate is
more likely because you have to spend more to launch a new fair
than to publicise an already well-known and well-established
event.
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