I’m chuckling to myself as I write this, tickled by the ways synchronicity and karma worked their way into my Saturday. Yesterday was the big HandmadeMN Market in Minneapolis, a show put on by the HandmadeMN Etsy team that I’m part of. It’s the largest group of Etsy artisans in the state…and they rock!
They’ve been planning this show for a while; I don’t think my Etsy shop was even open before their application deadline, so I wasn’t an exhibitor at the show.
Their advertising and promotion committee was in charge of spreading the word about the event. Since I’ve spent so much of my life in public relations and radio, I offered to give them some pointers on reaching out to the media. Their original press release was fine, but I worried it wouldn’t stand out on news desks, so I offered to write a new release and story ideas to pitch editors & producers. I was totally happy to help and the committee was really appreciative. End of story, right?
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| ljbe at the HandmadeMN Market |
Well, the team did a great job of distributing press materials and making themselves available to the media.
Huge kudos to Andrea, Julie and Lindsay! They wound up getting great coverage in both of our major newspapers, on our local FOX affiliate, in METRO magazine and on the radio. To celebrate, they created this Etsy treasury of art by people who helped pull the show together, including my “Right On Time” collage above. How sweet!
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| Handmade aromatherapy soaps from Sacred Suds |
Late on Friday night, I got a tweet from one of the show organizers, saying they’d had a last-minute vendor cancellation and would I want to display my art at the show the next day? Oh, man! I was so disappointed that I couldn’t do it, but I had my radio show in the morning and my in-laws were arriving from Texas (plus, it would have required some major scrambling to get everything ready). I whined a little (okay, a lot) to my hubby about how cool it would have been to be there; how it would have been great exposure for my art
and could have provide a great sales boost for my store.
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| I drooled over the plush playmates at the Little Big Pants booth. |
The next morning, I headed in to the studio; our show this week was about the power of gratitude. As our theme music played, I got settled in behind the mic and pulled up my email on the computer. Huh!? There was a notice in my inbox that someone in Pennsylvania had just bought one of my originals! Whaaaat?! More notices! My necklaces were flying out of the shop! As we went on-air, I kept one eye on my email, watching order after order roll in. Turns out the HandmadeMN treasury, the one including my collage, had been featured on the FRONT PAGE of Etsy, giving my art amazing exposure and a flood of new sales. Wheeeeeeeeeee!
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| Vintage costume jewelry from Kellybot |
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| Adorable bags by Cayenne Peppy |
It was so fun to float through the HandmadeMN Market yesterday enjoying others’ art, aware that I’d already had a flurry of sales without having to display my wares at the show that day.
Kindness is a boomerang. You never know when or how or why using your own skills or knowledge or love to happily help others will come back to bless you.
