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Seminars For 2008
January 2, 2008

In my last post, I looked at the retailer nominees for the ARTS awards and their web sites and concluded:

Here’s the one big thing I can use at Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery.  Several stores are using seminars to educate the retail public and gain customers.  Boyles Furniture has a series of seminars that begin at 10:30 AM and Accessories Etc has a number of seminars that run from 7 to 8 PM.  In our case, I can see interior designers conducting the seminars.  We get clients for the designers and a heightened relationship.

I broached the subject with Beverly and she was enthusiastic about the idea.  We made some calls and have three designers that think it is a great idea.  So now we have one designer set for an evening class in January, another designer for February and one for March.  We will try an evening tiime, a morning and a Saturday.  We will use our database to invite the public, the Landfair Furniture (Blog), the Pearl District Business Association and PR releases.  In addition, each of the designers have their own databases that will be used to drive attendance. 

You want to know how valuable your database is?  I called a list broker to inquire about renting names.  You can slice and dice the city any creative way imaginable, but list rentals can be expensive.  The usual minimum is 5,000 names.  That means you can rent the list one time for an approved mailing at 12 cents per name or a Minimum of $600.  I asked about email addresses.  Generally, they are not available, so you need to come up with a mailing piece.  The last mailing I designed from online templates.  It was a small mailing of 225 and the whiole cost was $179, figure about $1 apiece.  If I rented a list, then my mailing to 5,000 would cost me $600 plus $5,000.  If I owned a database of 5,000 names, you can see  how much money I would save.

Another way to get the message out is to run an ad in the local newspaperor use radio or have a flyer insert in the newspaper.  I will investigate each and report back to you.

Broyles will have seminars in the next two months and these are their topics:

• Design Trends For A Stylish 2008
• Beauty Underfoot ~ Designing and Living With Oriental Rugs
• Fabric Trunk Show
• Ferguson Copeland Fabric Trunk Show
• Discovering Your Personal Decorating Style

Accessories, Etc had seminars in 2007 with these topics:

• Rx for “Blank Wall Syndrome”
• “Women are from Venus…” but your bedroom doesn’t have to be.
• The Accessory Seminar -Accessories finish a room just like good jewelry finishes an outfit.

Do you have information on this topic that you can share?  Please leave a comment or email me at landfair3554@comcast.net

Posted by Mike Landfair on January 2, 2008 | Comments (0)