Why you HAVE to brand your Antique Booth | Inventory Mistakes in your Antique Booth Business

hey there everybody it's melanie welcome back to my youtube channel i'm the owner of lost and found and this is the lost and found youtube channel today's the video is another video for you antique booth owners out there if you are wanting to know how to take your booth from a hobby to a business then this video is going to be super super helpful i hope that you join me to watch it today we're going to talk about one of the most common mistakes with your inventory that i myself have made and that i have seen other booth owners make as well all right so here on the lost and found channel we've talked about several things so far that you can do to take your booth business from a hobby level to a business level and really it's just a mindset shift so much of this it's learning some basic business skills it's learning to think like a business owner instead of someone who's just kind of selling some stuff for fun so we've talked about staging your items we've talked about realizing that just selling stuff isn't just enough to make a great business we've talked about maybe your prices are too low if you're wondering about those videos they're in our antique booth playlist you can go check them out after this but in this video i want to talk about inventory and this is specifically a topic that um i think if you can change the way you're thinking about this you're going to see some really better long term growth in your business it may not change things like immediately this next weekend but long term it's going to help you build a better business okay so i'm going to start off first by sharing a story to illustrate what i want to talk to you guys about today a couple years ago we moved to a new area and one of the things i do when i move to a new place is i go find my new favorite antique mall to shop at i love shopping at antique malls it's one of my favorite things to do so there was one that i had driven past on my way to church over and over and over again it looked amazing from the outside and i had the opportunity on a saturday to sneak away um i dropped my kids off at a birthday party and i was gonna sneak away and run to this antique mall and i was super super excited about it so i went in and unfortunately it was a really disappointing experience i was in and out of the whole mall in maybe 20 to 30 minutes max and back to the birthday party with my kids my husband said that was really quick and i said yeah i know there just really wasn't anything there so let me tell you why i an avid antique shopper someone who loves digging who loves finding cool stuff why i just breezed through the small and was not interested at all it's because every single booth in this mall was just a repeat of the same thing it was shelves with just a variety of random stuff on them and then a variety of random stuff on the floor okay and that was just repeated over and over again throughout this mall it was just kind of like i was going from one garage sale to another garage sale to another garage sale there was not a single thing in that mall with the exception of one booth which i'm going to tell you more about later there's not a single thing in that mall that stood out to me that i thought wow that is a really cool find or gosh they did something really neat with that look at how they displayed that that's so awesome i need that for my home there wasn't a single thing and that doesn't mean that there wasn't some of that stuff there there maybe could have been but it meant that nothing stood out to me and it just was a really disappointing experience and also i was there on a saturday afternoon you guys while i was there i maybe saw one other person nobody was buying anything um you know my mall that i was at in texas like saturdays it was full of people there was a line at the cash register and this small it just felt dead and i really started thinking about like what what was going on there like what why why was it not an inspiring place to be why did i not find anything that i wanted to buy and the more i kind of thought through it the more i realized that it 100 percent had to do with the branding that the booths had or really the lack of branding so when i talk about branding your booth i'm not just talking about signage or tags um or the colors you know kind of that you use for your logo those things are important here what i want to talk about more though is is how you're branding the the look and feel of your actual booth space are you giving it a cohesive look and feel at all or are you just taking whatever you happen to find at that weekend's garage sale and putting it on a shelf so if you're just sticking whatever you find on the shelf you're not giving the customers anything to remember you buy you are just blending in with every other booth that's there even if let's say you're cut you have a customer that finds say they find a great basket in your booth and they take it home and they hang it on the wall and their friend says hey where did you get that basket they're gonna say oh i was at this antique mall it was in some booth there they're not going to remember what booth they got it from because your booth was just like a collection of stuff sitting on a shelf there was nothing for them to mentally or emotionally attach themselves to there's nothing that made your booth stand out even if they find something cool in there most likely they're not gonna remember it they're not gonna remember where it was or how to recommend it to their friends okay or let's say that you brand your booth as this cool funky boho mcm booth and same basket right is in your booth that fits in with that decor and you know same customer same scenario they buy it they take her home their their friend says hey where'd you get that awesome basket they're gonna say i went to this antique mall and there was this one booth in that mall that had this amazing kind of mid-century boho vibe you'll know it as soon as you see it it's on the second row towards the back everything they had there was amazing they have more baskets and if you're looking to decorate kind of with that kind of scheme they have some awesome stuff there okay do you see the difference right so same basket same customer different booth totally different customer experience and totally different referral experience here's the truth about the inventory that you have in your booth and whether or not you are branding your booth if you sell just everything then your customers are going to remember you for nothing i know that's kind of hard to hear and i understand that sometimes you don't feel like you're really in good control over your inventory you're kind of at the mercy of whatever you find but you have to start disciplining yourself to put together some sort of cohesive brand for your booth customers have to have something to latch on to remember you buy if you were just shelves with random stuff they're not gonna remember you and they're not gonna refer you to your friend to their friends and you're not going to stand out as they're wandering through your mole okay so let's talk about a couple of ways that you can brand your space you don't have to overthink it i'm not saying that it has to be super rigid okay you can brand your space with um maybe you use you know everything in your booth is white and gray you can brand your booth with you know other colors that you pick you can go with a certain decor style like i said with um you know mid-century or boho or you can be farmhouse or you can be the person in the mall that has all of the cool brass pieces displayed or you can be the person in the mall that has all the vintage silver plate like you can brand your booth with a certain collection of inventory that you always carry right or um or maybe you really pare down what you have and you only have a certain you know you carry this and this is what you have and it's actually pretty limited inventory but it's incredibly clear who you are and what you do okay there's lots of different ways that you can give your booth a brand and a cohesive feel you just have to do something you can't just throw whatever you find in the street in there you have to bring it together and give your your customers something to remember you by that's the blank booth okay fill that in with whatever you want but it has to be something there in that blank i got this from the blank booth so remember when i said there was one booth in the mall that i do remember that's what this person had done they had really pared down their inventory the only thing they had was jewelry that was it and i'm assuming that it was used jewelry um jewelry they had found it garage sales and estate sales it wasn't you know displayed amazing it was all just pegboard um it was displayed by color lots of necklaces some earrings but that was all they had was jewelry and they actually had multiple pretty large booth spaces and i'm willing to bet you guys that that jewelry seller was the top seller in that mall even though that's the only thing she sells i'm willing to bet that she's probably doing the best of anybody else in that mall and here's why because when someone finds a cool piece of jewelry from from her booth and they wear it and they ask their friends where they find it they're going to be able to say there's this amazing vendor at this mall that has a ton of jewelry you should go check her out here's where she is right she has given her customers a brand to attach themselves to they're going to remember that they're going to know where she was in the mall they're going to be easy to find when when new referral customers come her way everybody knows exactly what she does and so that is the kind of business that can grow by word of mouth when you have a very clear brand you're giving your customers an opportunity to help spread the word of your business when you don't have a very clear brand your customer has really no idea who you are as a business no idea what you do so they don't know how to tell other people about you okay one other thing i want you to think about when you're thinking about branding your inventory and it goes back to are you just creating a space with shelves with stuff stuck on it or are you creating a memorable experience and a feel for your customers to connect to okay so let me say this most of you watching this video have an incredible talent of finding cool stuff right you know how to dig through someone's storage locker or the piles of junk at the thrift store or you know you know how to spot the diamond in the rough at the garage sale right you know how to find the cool thing and repurpose it and reuse it and you have a vision for how it can be used to decorate your home in this really amazing way recognize that that is a talent that you have but not all of the people who shop in your mall have not everybody who is a customer has that same talent nor do they have that same desire they don't want to go dig through the piles of junk to find the diamond in the rough and then figure out a creative way to use it in their home they need you to do that work for them okay so let me give you an example of what i'm talking about let's say you find this amazing old vintage weathered wood tool caddy okay liter literally it was something that you know grandpa carried his tools around and it's just worn wood and it's sitting in a garage at an estate sale and you buy it and you immediately know that this is an incredible decor piece right you can fill it with greenery and it can go on an entry table um you can use it as a patio party and you know put um you know cups and utensils and napkins in it and use it as a centerpiece there's all sorts of things you can do with this tool caddy and you've already got them all in your mind right and so you think oh yeah somebody's going to buy this for sure because it's an amazing find but then you take it to your booth and you just sit it on the floor or you just sit it on a shelf what you're doing is you're asking your customers to have the same talent that you have and not all of them are going to have it they're going to some of them are going to look at that and just go that's just an old like wooden toolbox they're not going to know how to use it so you need to be doing the work for your customers of not just having your item on the shelf but you need to stage and display that item so that when they see it they know that's what i do with this that's how i can use this in my home okay and again if you're doing this with your fines if you're staging them and displaying them and you're showing your customer the cool thing that they can do with this if you're going ahead and hanging it on a wall and showing them how to use it or filling it with greenery whatever if you're showing them how to use it then you're creating that brand and that experience for your customers same item it's just displayed a different way it's not sitting on a shelf or sitting on the floor it's already put together for them when you can start doing this with your items you're going to reach a different level of customers okay you're going to reach the customers that are those home decor shoppers that are the people that you want they're the people that are willing to pay more money for your fines because they don't have the vision to go hunt it down like you do they want to pay you to hunt it down for them and then they just want to take it home turn key decor for their house that's what they want so provide that for them you know how to use the cool things that you find go ahead and show your customers how to use them display your fines and then they're going to be willing to pay you more for them and they're going to remember your booth they're going to remember that you are the booth with all these creative things that they have used to decorate their home with all right so couple takeaways from this video if you are looking to take your booth to a business level where you're getting repeat customers where you're getting customer referrals where people are connecting with you long term as a business where they know they can come back and shop with you over and over and over again because they know you're always going to have amazing stuff you have to brand your booth you have to give it some sort of cohesive look and feel so that you stand out among just the rows of people that have stuff on a shelf and maybe that doesn't mean that that you know you're buying anything different you may keep buying all the same stuff maybe it just means that you're displaying it better that you're staging it better that you're creating vignettes in your space instead of just a shelf of stuff or maybe it means that you start shopping differently that you don't buy just every cheap thing that you find that you think you can make a buck on that you decide to limit what you're going to have in your booth i'm only going to have things that fit in with this decor scheme or with this color scheme or with this feel by limiting and niching down you can actually create a much stronger better brand experience which over time will translate to a stronger business with more sales and a stronger repeat customer base okay i hope you guys have found this helpful if you found it helpful please share this video in your booth groups with your booth friends i really do want to try and help everybody elevate their business if that's what you're out here to do and if you've got some thoughts please leave them in the comments and of course if you are not a lost and found subscriber then i definitely invite you to hit that button to subscribe with us today to join what we have going on here and of course we always have our booth seller boot camp four week online course that is now open for new registrants whenever you want to jump in the link to that is here in the video description and it's also up at the top of the video right now so you guys are amazing here's to a great week of sales at your booth business thanks for joining me and i'll see you again soon

Channel: Lost & Found Decor

Views: 2,101

Keywords: antique booth, booth business, small business

Id: KTklXfcGrws

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021