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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Birka and the cold facts of business

Hi! I missed you all!

This is a panorama shot of the exhibition hall, there were a lot of merchants, I'm guessing 700-1000 people attended the event. It went pretty well overall, but just barely passed Rowan's test for profitability. At about an hour before pack down she agreed it went well enough to come back for another year, but it was a close call, after all it was an expensive event.

Personally, I think it's worth it to go out to this event for the break in our winter routine and the networking and visiting with friends, but the bills have to be paid and it helped, but not very much.
Here is the approximate breakdown:

Table Fees $80
Gasoline up and back $175

Hotel and Hotel Parking $309
Meals out $150
Total Cost $704
 4 days away from production.
and $25/day in trade for dog care.
After paying the expenses, we came away with about $700 for the bills. Truly, it was barely worth the 4 days monetarily. I could have produced another 2K worth of pots to be sold online without losing nearly 50% to sell it.

to truly make this event pay for us we needed another $500 in sales.

But what we got...

A break in our routine
to see beautiful snowy new England
to visit with Devon and Joe on the way up and
to visit, hang out and network with other folks we only see a couple times a year
to distribute more business cards to our customers who will then visit us the rest of the year in a time of pottery needs..like weddings, birthdays and stuff.

It's hard to count the overall value, but overall I feel good about it, besides, I did relax a little..in a lovely hotel with my lovely wife, even if it was only 1 night of relaxation, it was worth it.