I was at Chelsea Flower Show a week or so ago, and came across a stand selling upmarket children’s playhouses. Now these playhouses weren’t to my taste, but I was intrigued nonetheless and walked over to the stand to pick up a brochure. My jaw hit the floor when I heard one of the owners cooly discussing prices with couple of clients. They ranged from £20-30,000! And the last ’show house’ had been snapped up by a Russian billionaire (no surprises there then). Of course there will be people willing to pay that. And I couldn’t fault the craftsmanship. What interested me was why they had bothered to attend Chelsea in the first place. Presumably to sell their playhouses right?
So why was the only piece of marketing collateral on display a badly printed, single sided postcard with a nasty photo and Times New Roman text? How many opportunities had they missed because they didn’t have a nice, glossy brochure to hand out? Ok, so I was never going to buy. And I would have been one of those people who took a brochure only to put it in the recycling when I got home. But what a missed opportunity!
I imagine their logic went something like this. “We only need to sell 10 playhouses a year. Why would we have 2,000 brochures printed- we couldn’t handle that many orders”. I think they’re missing the point. A big point. Exhibiting at Chelsea can’t have been cheap. And yet I can’t remember this company’s name. I suspect anyone with any passing interest has also forgotten about them. The nasty postcard also didn’t sell. It didn’t encourage me that these people were serious about their business or that they could create anything inspiring that I would like.
How much would a brochure have cost them? £2-3,000? I’d say that would be money well spent. A nice glossy brochure, full of images, client testimonials and inspiration would have probably sold another 10 playhouses. If they only sold one they’d have made their money back.
They probably also thought they’d get a chance to speak to any serious buyers at the show. But we don’t all work like that. People are shy – sometimes our best clients to come out of exhibitions are the ones that call us after the event. Either these clients were too shy, or we were too busy to make contact. Having something that people can take away is crucial. And let’s be honest, if you’re asking people to invest £30k in a playhouse, £2 for a brochure doesn’t seem unrealistic!
