This past Friday and Saturday, I had Open House at my shop. It wasn’t what I hoped for, but wasn’t a complete disappointment either.
For advertising, I walked around the business park my studio is in, and handed out flyers. Some were enthusiastic, others were not. I also sent out 200 post cards, 67 letters, and 25 odd e-mails. I also had an ad in the local newspaper. Out of all of that, I had 11 people over the two-day period.
My first day of open house was on a Friday. I wanted to draw in some of the people from the office park. One came. That was quite disappointing. I had one other visitor, one of my students that I had not seen in a while. It was good to see her, and chat for a while.
The next day, Saturday, two of my neighbors came, one of my clients, and five others that had seen the ad in the paper. They all picked up flyers, got a tour of the studio, a few minutes of back massage, and a bottle of lotion. When asked if they wanted to look through the place, one of my visitors commented “They’re all alike aren’t they?” I replied “I hope not.” After all the time we spent on fixing the place up, I hope it doesn’t look like all the others. In fact, I know it doesn’t.
When one of the people got in the massage chair, she asked if I was going to find all her problem spots. I told her that since she was going to test me, I would look. I stepped back, closed my eyes and told her where each problem was. Her friend that had been watching was standing there with her eyes wide open. The person in the chair made an appointment for a hot stone massage. Cool.
I think I made some good contacts. We held a drawing of the 11 entries and pulled two names to receive a free Swedish massage, and one to receive a Swedish massage at half price. I’m hoping that some of the ones that visited will come back for a session. I’m hoping that once the people who receive free massages get theirs, they will want more. We’ll see. I’m putting light into those thoughts.