Train Show

Rick M

Senior Member
As I mentioned in the train photography thread, I have a booth at the NYS fairgrounds this weekend for the annual train show. We had allot of fun today and I think we did pretty good for a hobbyist. Today the show ran from 10-5 and I had gross sales of about $375.00 and a net profit after all costs of about $250.00. The wife and I had allot of fun meeting people and talking photography. People are really fascinated by HDR, wish I had a dime for every time I explained it :). It is a great feeling to have others like your work and buy it.

Compared to shooting portraits and weddings, the sales dollars are small, but I find it "fun" to sell shots you created for pleasure and without stress. The tough part is you do not have a captive customer that has to pay you for a shoot. You are relying on pure impulse and someone wanting your picture on their wall without themselves or a loved one as the subject.

I'll post an iphone shot of my booth and follow-up with some more experiences/learnings.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
Here's a shot of my booth before I turn on my additional lighting. I'll try to get a shot with the lights on tomorrow morning. It got really busy as soon as the doors opened at 10 and we had just finished setting up.

Please excuse the iphone pic!

gude9y5a.jpg
 
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Rick M

Senior Member
A few interesting stats from today.

​About 60-70% of customers were women. I would estimate the best buying age groups to be under 25 or over 50. My rusty old bulldozer (hanging on my pegboard to the right) was my #1 selling print. I had about 10 on hand, sizes 5x7 through 11x14. I only have a couple left for Sunday :(. My second biggest seller was the locomotive on the table to the extreme right, low on that one now too. I sold about 30 prints, only 2 in frames. I had signs for pricing, I think I lost sales on the larger prints as people may have thought they were too expensive. Tomorrow I will have price stickers on everything 11x14 and larger.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
Some more thoughts,

I thought I would write down descriptions of what I sold, so I would know what to re-order, no time for that. It got real busy at 10am and by noon I booked about 70% of my sales. The afternoon was very sporadic. Little kids make me cringe! The packaging I used worked out very well and stood up well to the constant browsing. People love the stories behind the prints. They also like stuff from their demographic area, I labeled the location on most of my prints and many asked if I had shots from where they were from.

Ladies liked to show pictures of rusty heavy equipment to their husbands. 60-70%female customers and not a single flower picture sold! Everyone liked unusual subjects. I can't say enough how much folks were enthralled with HDR!

About 80% of sales was cash, 20% credit card, the square reader works great!
 
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Rick M

Senior Member
Here is Sunday morning set up with additional lighting. Sundays are not good sales were much less, which was true for all of the vendors there. $175 in sales with a net profit of $100 for the day. So I managed a total profit of $350 for the weekend. Funny thing is rusty old heavy equipment was the winner of the day. A Catapillar operator bought every heavy equipment picture I had in stock!

Iphone pic,

uzede6u2.jpg
 
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Rick M

Senior Member
Sales demographics about the same on Sunday. Bottom line is everyone buys except middle-aged men (we are cheap) :). Credit card sales reversed today, more credit than cash. Again, the Square reader is excellent, cost is only .0275% (that's .27 cents on a $10 sale for guys like me), no other fees. They deposit into your account the next business day.

I've heard "shows", "festivals" and any subject specific event is not great for sales. The reason is visitors are there for something else besides shopping. Next weekend I'm at a Art/Craft sale on Saturday, will be interesting to compare results and I'll continue with this thread to let you know how that works out.
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
Wow, this is great Rick. I'm happy for you. At least you will find out what people are ready to spend for. And I do think that HDR is a feature for sales. It blends photography with art and attracts lookers. And without lookers, you don't have sales.

​Keep it up my friend!
 

Rick M

Senior Member
On a side note, about 200 business cards were picked up and I have an order for a 30x40 print which should put at least another $50 in my pocket from the show. I'll be tracking my web hits to see if there is much effect. Young folks were really into HDR, I had a group of 5-6 RIT students that hung out with me for about 30 minutes talking about it. There were some traditional photographers that were very interested also. I should be getting a kick back from Photomatix!
 

Browncoat

Senior Member
Very cool, Rick!

I've been seriously slacking on my train photography. Kind of sad, considering that's what got me into all of this in the first place. One of these days, I need to take a road trip to the nearest major hub and make a day of it...been far too long.

Railfans are a cool bunch. I still have a buttload of model railroad crap out in the garage for that layout I'll get around to building someday. I still go to train shows, even though lately I don't even buy anything. It's just fun to be around folks who share this same weird obsession with trains. Kudos for setting up shop and making a buck with your cool photos!
 

Rick M

Senior Member
Thanks Anthony! I had a lot of fun doing the show and met some very nice folks! Sure was a nice feeling having people interested and buying my work. You never really know how good your work is based on family and friends.
 

Sandpatch

Senior Member
Great posts Rick -- glad that it was a successful weekend! I was at a train show last month and made the mistake of stopping at a table where a talented artist was trying to sell his paintings. His work was very good, but his sales approach was terribly aggressive and I'm certain that he cost himself with poor salesmanship. I had an easy and honest out -- I have no remaining wall space. :)
 

Rick M

Senior Member
As an update, I've done three more shows since the train show. The next two were small craft shows. Each were a bit slow, but I averaged about $200 in sales at each one. After the cost of the space and all other costs I made about $120 in profit for each one.

Yesterday was at a large mall and did fantastic. The event organizer offered me a last minute space for $60 (went for $125 originally). This would be my greatest opportunity, big mall on the last Saturday before Christmas! I was a bit concerned because I had not planned on doing another show this year so I only had about $1500 in prints on hand (retail value).

We ended up selling over $600 in prints which translated into just over $400 in profit. We had a lot of fun and the customers were just great. It's fun how everyone that has picked up a camera wants to tell you their story :). Again, people are just amazed at HDR.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
2nd year at the Train show and we had a great time again! Sales increased by over $200 and several repeat customers.
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
Rick, keep up the great work! It is always fun to sell your work and sometimes even more fun to exchange with the folks, except if it's a wedding lol.
 
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