Sarah Marie officially started in October of 2007 (just eight short months ago!), and we were determined to exhibit at the National Stationery Show in May. We submitted the application for the show in November and received our booth number in December, which gave us five months to prepare. Our calendar looked something like this:
Market Research/Planning the Business: October to December
- decided on what type of products we wanted to offer
- decided what our initial investment would be
- figured out wholesale and retail pricing
- applied to the National Stationery Show
Design and Sourcing Phase (Booth and Products): October to March
- designed both the booth and our entire line of products
- sent our jobs out for quote, and picked our printers and suppliers
Production Phase: March-May
- the booth, our line of products, and all of our marketing and promotional materials were produced in these three months
Marketing Campaign & Promotional Materials, Design & Production: March-May
- designed and produced the following materials:
- business cards
- marketing mailing
- wholesale catalog
- press kits
- compiled a list of stores to target
- designed the website and got it up
- sent out our marketing mailing
I don’t necessarily recommend starting your business seven months before NSS, but it worked for me because it gave me a tangible deadline, and as you can see above it required that I have several key components of the business figured out, and that I have all necessary business materials designed and on hand.
The next four posts will focus on what we did for our marketing campaign, different options for designing a booth, our experience during the show, and our experience after the show.