edicehouse
Member
My bread and butter for pen sales is the $20 slims. Well I did a show the first week of the month and had a few sales they were all mid price pens, not a single slim.
Irony
- Thread starter edicehouse
- Start date
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Years ago, when I still did shows, I had one show where I sold only one slimline while selling about thirty others. Near the end of the show I figured out there was another fellow selling slimline only for $5-8 each, while mine were $20.00. To the untrained eye they all looked the same but his looked like they had been turned using a inverted beaver and finished with a quick coat of French Polish. Many were crude to say the least, with little fit and finish to them. In short I would have turned everyone of them down to the brass and started over again. But the old fellow was happy as a clam and I understood he was only trying to cover his expenses of his new hobby. He came to the next show but I don't recall ever seeing him again. I figured that you can't compete against a person not trying to make much money and that it was best not to try to do so. I just stocked up on non slim lines for a while and made more money on fewer sales so I was fine with it. In fact I found it was easy to change the mix of my pens on display to bring up more higher retailing pens while still keeping a few slim lines out for bargain hunters. In fact I often gave a kid his choice of a second slim line pen free when they bought one. Made them and their mothers very happy.