Birthday Bash

Mary Case GCF · Post by **Mary Case GCF** » Sun 01 Apr, 2007 7:33 pm

I know its a long shot,

but if any of you happen to be in the Edinburgh area on the 19th of May, you're more than welcome to come along to our 10th Birthday celebrations.

just thought i'd invite you all in case you were in the area at the time and feel like popping in

Grahame Case

Roboframer · Post by **Roboframer** » Sun 01 Apr, 2007 7:37 pm

I doubt I'll be there, much as I'd like to, but please tell how you organised/promoted it etc etc, and how it went too.

Our tenth in this shop in September - looking for ideas to steal!

Mary Case GCF · Post by **Mary Case GCF** » Sun 01 Apr, 2007 7:53 pm

Hi John,

I'll let you know how we get on,

I used to be a major publicity person for several online gaming communities, so marketing things is really second nature for me.

Due to budget constraints we're mainly publicising it locally, theres a local magazine which details services and things offered by local businesses that is distributed to around 4000 people in the area, has proved very sucessful lately, (we had 10% off vouchers dispatched locally in three publications - the returns from this one was by far the strongest ( the other two are getting dropped)).

We'll be getting posters made for our A1 size A-board which will sit on the pavement outside, and mailing existing customers from our 4 month old est-lite database.

We are currently toying with the idea of a press release to the Edinburgh Evening News, which has a readership of: 198,000, hoping they pick up on it and do an editorial.

In addition to all this - and for the future, we are ordering "Blackhall Framing Gallery" pens, these will hopefully get passed between people, as pens do, (our normal pens seem to disappear from our desk- so these should).

Customised carrier bags are also being considered, but that'll be when we have enough money.

On the day, we'll be having a Bagpiper (my father) outside, to try and attract attention from passers-by. We have a very busy roadside location, and hopefully he'll get noticed

by far the best thing we can do to publicise this event is by telling everyone who comes in the shop that it is happening,

hope these ideas help

Grahame

Roboframer · Post by **Roboframer** » Sun 01 Apr, 2007 8:35 pm

Press release - that's one I'll do, the West Sussex Gazzette did one for us when we opened, so ..... 10 years on.

Then again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

Grahame Case · Post by **Grahame Case** » Sat 19 May, 2007 4:54 pm

Well,

thank god that is over....

We had big holes on walls for large portions of the afternoon, we couldn't replenish stock quick enough

People kept coming in, (10 or so people in the shop at one point alone)

4 Big framed Limited Editions are currently out on approval, hoping to hear about them on Monday,

We over estimated how many bottles of bubbly we would need, so we now need to put on another 10% off day to get rid of the 20 or so bottles we have left over.

lots of framed prints that we could never sell for love nor money before went from the window today, and orders for others which are similar.

the framing design desk is a mess of chevrons and mountboard samples, not had time to tidy it,

18 Framing jobs in taking advantage of the 10% off discount, others got sent away with a card saying they can get 10% off at a later date, due to not having room at the design area to deal with them at the time.

cards we had reduced to half price have been sold out off of their spinner,

i bought a coffee and lunch at 1pm, it was still sitting out in the workshop at 4pm, i got two bites of my panini and a slurp of coffee before we got inundated.

i wish we had a clicker to measure how many people we had in,

and now i have to go out to a ceilidh tonight.... i'll be asleep in the corner i think.

Post by **John** » Sat 19 May, 2007 8:22 pm

Congratulations, and well done! Your hard work and planning has really payed off.

You are probably relieved that not too many forum members turned up to be entertained. (or did they?)

We got a flavour of what it must have been like for you. The five customers that we were going to have all day walked in together, around 11am.

In the afternoon Belfast was like a ghost town. Apparently some football match was being played today.

Many thanks for sharing your experience.

Grahame Case · Post by **Grahame Case** » Sat 19 May, 2007 10:21 pm

we were twiddling our thumbs until around 10.30am thinking it was going to be a massive flop when the sluicegates opened.