5 things I wish I knew before renting out a booth

I have been setting up booths around the island for my brand Delicate Ornaments. Here are some things that you might want to take note of if you’re a small business owner and planning to rent a booth.

1️⃣ Always do a recce of the site or measure the space

I recently rented a booth at Guoco Tower selling my jewelries. One big mistake is that I did not went down to see the place. There was no fan installed on the side I rented. And also, when it rained the rain will splash inwards onto the booth.

2️⃣ Have a wet-weather plan in mind

Talking about rain, we did not prepare for rain! We had a black fabric cloth that we use to cover the booth overnight. If we were to use that to cover from the rain, the cloth itself will get wet. We ended up getting plastic covers, but it is not transparent so the customers can’t see the products when it rains.

3️⃣ Have a packing List

Both products and equipment and miscellaneous. We did prepare for the booth and get the items ready the night before. But we still missed out the important things! Like charger for the iPad (we use our iPad for the shopify POS) and also fan because the place is hot af.

4️⃣ Lighting!

I am selling jewelry and also natural crystal accessories which requires good lighting! It is so important because there are some crystals that have natural blue shines and also the sterling silver reflects light differently. The Guoco Tower booth didn’t do as well, probably because it is heavily dependent on natural lighting and there is no electrical plug!

5️⃣ Competition

This is quite hard for you to control but one way to beat your competition is definitely your product/service! At Guoco Tower, we had a crystal business 2 booths away from us. Luckily, we were selling different kind of crystals, they do more figurines and display while we do customisations and keychains. On top of that, we have Sterling Silver. I did a booth at ITE Central and there was a week where my neighbour were selling crystals and they even brought in the exact same thing as us! But they price it so high the students couldn’t afford it.

Hope these are helpful for my small biz hustlers! Let’s Jiayou together! I will be boothing at Suntec Expo on 4th & 5th Nov for the Markerplace Collective, see you there!

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