Entrepreneur SIG will resume this Thursday, April 18th @ 7:00pm! It will be hosted in Asmbly’s Multipurpose room. Bring friends and fellow entrepreneurs!
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This week Capital Factory is hosting their quarterly Founders Academy Essentials, — a free, transformative 3-day experience meticulously crafted to empower entrepreneurs with essential skills and knowledge, led by Gordon Daugherty (one of the founders of Capital Factory). I have attended multiple times before, and highly recommend this to any entrepreneur, regardless of startup age, industry, or affiliation. The Founders Academy includes a 3-day learning curriculum designed specifically for driven entrepreneurs that are passionate about their business potential! You can attend in person or virtually. If you aren’t able to make it, do not fret! I will be sharing materials and helpful resources from Founders Academy during this month’s Entrepreneur SIG on Thursday!
Fellow Entrepreneurs, Sadly I won’t be able to attend this meetup due to a customer meeting for my RE biz, but I did want to highlight a maker opportunity for an upcoming market in June that is accepting makers below. (Trouble is they want $500 per booth!)
I can speak to that company though the vendors that work with them are always REALLY happy with the crowd turn-outs - they do an excellent job advertising to the right demographics.
I went last year and there were tons of people there, looked like a lot of sales happening. I didn’t see too much woodworking there, so could be a good gap. Lots of jewelry, leather, resin, concrete, stuff like that.
Thanks for sharing, Steve! I’ve attended before - to give you all more context, this company has a model where they charge a lot for a booth, do a lot of marketing, and copy/paste city to city. That means pros and cons:
Pros:
good exposure marketing wise (that is, getting people in the door - their ads are all market general, not artist or maker specific)
From what I’ve heard, a fairly smooth and automated vendor experience (they do this a lot, and have, from what I hear ((I haven’t been on the vendor side of things)) a decent system set up for it)
Cons:
It’s a $$ machine for them: $500 minimum barrier to entry (this is a pretty high cost for a new maker, especially if you are trying to learn about markets, how to do them well, what products do well and what don’t, and what works well for you). They charge for tickets for people to attend, but you don’t make anything other than your own sales. If you are new to making and/or new to markets, this probably isn’t a great place to start. If you are experienced with markets, have a large inventory, and a higher budget for markets, this would be a good option!
The term “maker” was used in a very broad way, with some booths being full makers, local artists, etc. but also some large companies there (a large sunglasses brand that explained they were makers because their product is “designed in the US” but they are a corporation and go to trade shows as well, a coffee supplement brand from Chicago that also travels to trade shows, etc.). Maybe this makes it better for actual makers to fill the gap or worse in that these are big companies with a large budget, and travel around the US doing just this - not really representative of the actual maker community, and may mislead the audience when they are determining which booths to buy from and the value of true “making”.
I hope this is helpful - let me know if you have any questions!
