We
got back from San Francisco on Tuesday night and spent yesterday catching up on
things that had piled up during our absence, mostly e-mail and preparations for
spring quarter, which starts on Monday. Today will be spent packing and
shipping orders that accumulated while I was gone, including plant orders that
have been waiting since the dead of winter to be shipped to cold climates.
It’s
always fun to visit San Francisco, and we took an extra day after the salon
just to enjoy it. This time I gained a much better appreciation for the layout
of the city by staying in the North Beach area and walking everywhere except
Berkeley, which we visited by BART.
Overall
I'd deem the second annual San Francisco show a success, especially given that
these fragrance salons sponsored by Taste TV are a work in progress, still
ascending the steepest part of the learning curve.
Michael
and I had been traveling in Europe and Canada (my university work, his
vacation!) for most of March, so only had three days to prepare for the salon. I
was glad that I’d done it before, so all I had to do was go down my checklist,
making sure the 35 pounds of Fed Ex boxes were sent off in time to arrive
before the show. Nevertheless, by the time I got to San Francisco, I was pretty
much feeling like a zombie.
The
venue was a huge, enclosed dry dock at Fort Mason, a former military
installation, so we were out on the water with gorgeous views of the bay and
the Golden Gate Bridge. On the one hand, it was nice to have the perfumes in
the relatively tiny "penthouse" up above the level of the chocolate,
with plenty of ventilation. On the other hand, there were almost no signs
informing people where we were, or even that we were there. With better signs
in the park and the nearby farmers' market and cheaper tickets at the door, I
think we could have had twice as many walk-in visitors.
One
puzzling feature was the large empty bar in the center of the fragrance
penthouse area. I couldn’t figure out why someone wasn’t serving coffee, tea,
and non-chocolate snacks in the morning, adding stronger drinks in the
afternoon. It would have probably tripled the traffic to our area. As it was,
it was a forlorn, abandoned spot that somehow detracted from the activity in
the rest of the area.
The
other puzzling feature at both this show and the Los Angeles one was the near-total
disconnect between the fragrance salon and the chocolate salon. There was no
cross-publicity, no clear indication at the door that the ticket was for both
shows, and no signs directing the people in the enormous chocolate area to the
tiny fragrance area, which was all the way at the back of the building up a
flight of unmarked stairs.
Apparently
I can never anticipate the audience. At previous shows I've sold a lot of
discovery packs, and brought plenty of them this time. Contrary to
expectations, most people this time bought full bottles, so I ran out and had
to take orders to ship. It just proves that you never know. Sales seemed better
at this show than previous ones, and even some walk-in customers from the
chocolate show ended up buying. As at the LA show, I did a lot of
educating about fragrance, fielding the question, “How do you make perfume?”,
innumerable times and trying to figure out the proper response to the question,
“Do you have something lite?”. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that
there were fewer press people at this show than previous ones. Maybe they just
failed to identify themselves.
In
general, I'm happy with the way this show went. It’s always fun to meet and
interact with other perfumers, see their displays, and attend the
extracurricular events. I look forward to preparing better for the Seattle show
in May. It will be fun not having to worry about shipping things ahead of
time.
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