Our first ever Holiday Glow Art Sale and Show the first weekend of December was very successful. Here are some tips on hosting open houses to sell handmade art:

• Put out yard signs several weeks in advance.

• Serve food/drinks that people will enjoy and appreciate…and tell their friends about. We want Friday guests talking up our event on Saturday, perhaps coming back with other friends the next night! Have enough food so you don’t run out, please. We are all dependent on each other – we need to do a nice job.

• Have someone as a greeter at your door if you worry about people walking out with unpaid items. Your greeter can say hello, hang coats and remind people to remove their shoes.

• Be organized with your cash box, bags and boxes, tissue, etc. Also, people love on-the-spot gift wrapping!

• Have holiday music playing and festive décor to set the mood and encourage purchasing gifts.

• Make your business cards/brochures readily available.

• Be sure your door prize (if you are offering one) is attractively presented and the slips/deposit box/pencils are user-friendly. Have a form people can sign to be on your mailing or emailing list.

• Wear your nametag, smile & introduce yourself, invite questions about your work and then back off so guests can browse.

• Email or send out ‘hint cards’. People fill out the card with gifts that they’d like to be given, from your selection of inventory. They return the card/email to you. You pass along the hints to their spouse/significant other.

• Call and personally invite as many of your friends and acquaintances as you can. Don’t forget about people at your church, your neighbors and at your work place. People are much more likely to show up if they’ve had a phone call. We can expect a turnout of ¼ of the people who find out about our sale.

• Be sure you have distributed all your postcards (hand out personally or mail). Please hang up your flyers in public places. Many businesses will allow flyers/postcards in their break rooms, even if they don’t allow them in the lobby, etc. Our signs and printed material will be wasted investments if we don’t get them out into our community.

• If you know people in the smaller outlying communities, please be sure they know about our event. Ask them to put out flyers/postcards in their towns. Lots of people in these communities will come to GF for a special night out like this.

Use your email contacts and any social networking sites you belong to (such as Facebook, Plaxo, etc.) to tell people now about our event. And remind them again a day or two before our event.