I am doing my first VERY big show in 2 weeks (3-day music festival with 50K attendees and only 20 craft vendors!) and wonder what the pros and cons would be in your opinion? My gut feeling is to keep it open so festival goers can also shop from their phones (as well as my regular Etsy traffic) but am a little concerned that my convo-turnaround time will be slow, as well as effectively keeping track of inventory..... What do you do wise ones? :)
I'm doing a big show in September. I'm leaving my shop open. I have heard that when you put your shop on vacation, it takes months for it to recover. I will fill orders from the other town I am in, because I will have most of the stock with me. Three days isn't very long. I wouldn't close if I were you.
Thanks Carol - it has actually never hurt my shop when I go on vacation mode for a couple of days....more concerned about losing out on online shoppers and selling out of something in one place but still having it listed at the other! (wifi might be spotty and don't want to be on my iPad instead of attending to customers) I suppose I could put an announcement on each shop listing ("I am currently away from my studio at XXX festival - thank you for your patience and I will respond as soon as I can!")?
If I sold something at a show I would deactivate it from Etsy as soon as I could. Some things I deactivated ahead of time so they would only be available at the show. This time around I'm working on separate inventory for certain items so it will be less of an issue.
I wouldn't worry about the convo thing if you will be able to answer in the evenings after the show no one will be waiting more than 10-12 hours at the most. Which I would find reasonable as a customer.
I put my etsy shop on vacation when I do a show because I have several One Of A Kind items that would be difficult to duplicate if I sold two when I only have one. I could just deactivate the OOAK items, but my etsy shop is pretty slow (I sell more in one day at a show than I do in a month on ETSY) so I don't mind losing a day here or there on etsy.
We're the same as Bev, separate inventories, so no problems. One of my biggest shows of the year is in early December, which is also the busiest time for the Etsy shop. If I closed the shop temporarily, I would lose hundreds of dollars!
Thanks everyone for the input! I think I will do as Tana suggested and deactivate at the show as I sell items I am sure are the last ones in stock. I hate closing my shop unless it is an emergency.....we small-biz owners gotta make an income! :)
Another option...All of my hats are OOAK and I'm just starting to add them to my Etsy shop again. I plan on trying out the Etsy reader (in addition to square) at one of my fall shows so that anything listed can be sold from my shop right away. I figure it's a good incentive for me to get all of my new work photographed and up in my shop again! This might not take care of the possibility that someone buys something online before a person at show purchases it but the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim at this point, I'll just have to keep an eye on the app. :)
I agree for a weekend show, there's no reason to put it on vacation since you can now make updates from your phone. I just returned from a 4 week vacation where I did put my shop on vacation and as soon as I reopened, I had 2 sales, so I don't think it is an issue if you really need to take a break.
