Anyone who owns a store knows that sales are driven by how things are displayed as well as the features of the products themselves. As I have begun to try and sell woven birds made by Amazon Ecology's artisan partners from Peru to nature-oriented stores, several owners hesitated because they didn't know how they could attractively show off a big collection of our birds and other wildlife ornaments.
At the recent meeting of the Fair Trade Federation, I paid close attention to the ways that my fellow vendors were creatively showing off their ornaments and other crafts. At one workshop, some vendors said they actually create physical displays for their retail store customers as an incentive for them to buy more crafts from them and facilitate the sales of these crafts to their customers.
I went online and found a wide variety of nice ornament trees. A few resembling trees with twisted metal branches seemed interesting, but they were expensive and I could never make them. I could buy one I could bring to a festival or trade show in my car, but if I wanted to give our store customers an attractive and cost-effective way to display our birds and butterflies, I would need to design something they could receive in the mail and easily assemble.
A few simple wood trees seemed to offer viable options. I was grateful that my neighbor Dave whose carpentry skills and tools far exceed mine agreed to help me with this project. After settling on a basic design in our first meeting, I went off to Home Depot to buy some dowels and hardware.
Last week we spent 4 hours in Dave's garage using his table saw, planer, and drill press to make two ornament tree prototypes. We fully dressed one with birds and were pleased. On Thursday, I sanded, stained and waxed the "trunk and branches".
On Friday, I appreciated that two Wild Birds Unlimited store owners from Dresher, PA and Paramus, NJ showed me their displays of our ornaments, liked our prototype and gave me great ideas on how to improve it. On to Ornament Tree Gen3.
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