Back from Quilt Market!

I’m (finally) home from Quilt Market.  I feel like so much has happened between then and now, it’s weird to think I’m just now getting a chance to sit down and write about.  My trip was extra long because Market was located in Pittsburgh, which is just a 2 hour drive from my parent’s home (which is SO close considering there is typically a 30 hour drive between us).  I figured I might as well get double duty out of my cross country plane tickets, so I spent a week after Market with them.

In case you haven’t heard of it, Quilt Market is a trade show for the sewing industry.  Basically, sewing companies selling fabric, patterns or tools get booths to display their new items, and quilt shop owners (or their employees in charge of buying for their shops) attend to find all the latest and greatest products to carry in their stores.   It’s not open to the public, you have to submit proof that you are an industry professional to attend.

It was a fantastic trip.  The crazy thing about having a pattern business is that, along with needing to make great patterns that people actually want to buy, you’ve suddenly become a business professional.  As I’ve watched which sewing businesses succeed, it sure seems like it has less to do with having great patterns and more to do with how business savvy they are.  Since my natural business model would be to roll my eyes and cry, “Ugh…business…let’s think about something else!”, I feel like I have a lot to learn.  (oh, what I’d do to be able to sit around and design patterns all day while someone else took care of all the business stuff!)

We didn’t do a booth this time, our main goal for this trip was to learn as much as possible. (Doug came with me, though you’d never know it since we didn’t seem to get even one photo of him there.)  Is a Market booth worth the investment?  Is there a better way to get our name out there? We had so many questions!  Right now our printed patterns are carried by several distributors (a distributor is a company that collects products and sells them to stores).  Which, at first, felt like a great way to shove the whole business thing onto someone else.  But I always wondered how well they were about to represent little pattern companies like ours.

I don’t know whose idea it was to put bean bag chairs in the ‘networking lounge’ but whoever he is, I’m forever grateful! Walking around all day is not exactly a specialty of mine. So we’d walk around a bit, and then go crash in the lounge until I was ready to do a bit more walking.

They did have our patterns available for purchase at their booth, and before I complain I have to say that they sell way more patterns than I ever could on my own.  So, I do love working with them.  However, the distributor’s booths were huge.  They had hundreds (probably thousands) of patterns to look through.  You basically had to know what you were looking for to find it.  It was easy to confirm our worries that we would have to market our own goods to help people find them through distributors.

sigh.

The longer we were there, the more convinced I became that we should market our stuff by doing our own booth.  It’s just so scary!  I’ve heard about Quilt Market for so long and it seems impossible to be established enough as a company to actually go to a place like that and be the person giving inspiration. So as we walked around we took notes.  We got ideas.  We talked to booth owners.  The whole idea got a little less scary.  But only a little. 🙂

My goal for the next 6 months is to talk to as many shop owners as I can to figure out what kind of inspiration they are looking for when they go to Market.  If we do a booth, I want it to be as helpful as possible to those who come see it.  I’d love to work on patterns to help fill gaps in what their customers are looking for.

It’s all so intimidating!  It’s all so…ugh…businessy.  I guess I’m going to have to break down and learn to love this whole ‘business’ thing after all 🙂