Classing up the joint
If one of your goals for 2010 is to bring in more customers through classes, here are five tips to help you meet it:
1. Make it a party. If it costs $15 for the class individually, make sure that your prospective student knows that if she rounds up four of her friends, there’s a discount for groups of five or more. Also let her know that discount doesn’t come into play until after the class, so she knows all five students have to come through. Position this as a great way to celebrate someone’s birthday or as an after-work alternative to the bar.
2. Feed them. It’s true that cheese curls and Merino wool make a bad combination, and no one wants overdyed thread courtesy of a spilled can of soda. That said, there’s no reason why you can’t have a “wine, stitch and groan” night at the shop to celebrate the end of another great class session (although your local alcohol laws may mandate that the wine be of the sparkling grape juice variety). Just make it clear that the eating and drinking stays in the designated area — preferably a corner that gives them a full view of your latest inventory, so they can discuss among themselves what they want to buy as soon as they finish just one more egg roll. To keep it easy on your budget, make it a potluck: Let loyal customers who want to show off their latest recipes vie for a chance to win a small door prize, for example, by having everyone at the party write down their favorite dish. Or, if it’s pretty obvious that your local Julia Child is going to win every time, just draw one of the participants’ names from a hat.
3. Leave the shop. Offer to teach a class at the local senior center, the library, the coffee shop. Everyone who shows up receives a coupon to your shop and a schedule of classes there. The same goes for the numerous sewing guilds, garden clubs, women in business meetings (position needlework as a stress reliever!), etc. Think outside the box a little: Swap teaching a felted bead class at the local bead shop for them coming to show your regulars how to do Viking knitting, for example, or teach some crazy patch techniques at a quilt shop in return for them sending someone over to show your students how to piece together their redwork efforts.
4. Delegate. If you’re just too overburdened with other responsibilities to try to set aside time for a class, and if your employees aren’t quite ready for teaching, look to bringing in outside teachers. The cache of having the designer stopping in not only for a trunk show, but a class, can bring in new faces to the shop if you spread the word to local guilds and clubs. Plus, there are teachers for-hire like Julie Turner, Fiber Trades, who get the designer’s permission to go to shops specifically to teach a pattern. These strategies can expand your class schedule by offering techniques that perhaps you weren’t well-versed enough in to teach before.
5. Celebrate. Whether it’s a fashion show to display their finished pieces at the end of a multi-week class, or a new twist on an anniversary celebration (“We started in March, so we’re making a project in our ‘birthstone,’ aquamarine”), give your classes a personality unto their own. Make 2010 the Year of Education, where you reach out to young and old and equip them with skills to enjoy the art of needlework. They’ll come back to your shop again and again for knowledge, fellowship — and supplies.
Tags: branding, class, Fiber Trades, goal, Julie Turner, marketing, needleart, party, teach
January 8th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
If you market your class for stress relief, consider doing an anonymous before and after survey with your students to track their stress-relieving success. What a selling point!
January 11th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Julie, this is a great idea. The more people see it not as only a pastime, but a potential stress reducer, the better. Thanks for sharing!
Heather