It's a Wrap ... 2024 Shop Hop Failures, Successes and Conclusions

Shop Hop 2024

It’s a Wrap! We are finished with the March and April All Florida Shop Hop Marathon which ran for 61 consecutive days.

We finished with 1221 stickers and squares distributed to 1221 different hoppers! We gave away over 1170 Swag Bags, and all in all, had a lot of laughs, and a fabulous time.

We opened for extra hours, because, well, why not? We had bought a couple of pallets worth of SHOP HOP fabric and we really wanted to sell it. So, the best way to sell fabric during a SHOP HOP, is to let people HOP into your store and see it! And see it they did!

Our best selling kit was the Light ‘n Bright quilt kit, which sold as many as the next three quilt kits combined!

Becky and I had prepared a lot of things ahead of time, but it’s always hard to guess what’s going to sell out, and what’s going to sit around and be a dud.

When Becky came in, three days before the SHOP HOP, I had gotten a couple of kits prepared, but that was about it. Now, keep in mind that we had SEVEN quilt kits - two of which were in the magazine, plus 5 others. Then, we had the Boho Bag, and 2 other tote bags.  Those all had to be kitted so we could be ready when the doors opened on Friday, March 1, to eager beaver shop hoppers. (Plus the cosmetic bag mentioned later.)

Now we’re not normally open on Fridays, but other than create quilt kits, our main goal was to put together online orders. So, we just got in super early and did that, so we could start helping out the customers on that first day of March.

From the outset, we knew that March was going to be a blast! Hoppers were in, laughing, then out with Swag Bags in hand! They had a grand time, and so did we.

Every now and then Becky would disappear back to my Chop Shop, where she’d be putting together more Swag Bags, or creating still more of the two most popular kits. Make that three most popular kits!

We planned for 1500 HOPPERS, and since we had only 1221, we had plenty of give-aways, and lots and lots of fabric.

What did we do right?

**Becky flew in to help. That was definitely a big plus! We could not have done what we did without having her here.

**Well, we, for the most part, were able to meet with everyone who wanted to come. If a hopper came to our door, we let them in, whether we were open or not. We showed them around, we greeted them, tried to make them feel welcome, and had fabric and kits for them. We shrunk up our live shows on Mondays and Fridays, so we could attempt to fit them in between visitors. Ken, Becky and I gave more tours than we’ve ever given in our lives. I would sometimes give 10 tours per day, with Ken taking far more than that. Becky, Ken, and I posed for many pictures with people. It was fun, exhausting and I laughed a lot!

**We made posters for everyone coming in to see with all of our original kits on them.

**We had exclusive items for the Hoppers, though anyone who walked into the store during those two months was able to participate in the offers. We never ran out of our 2 yard backing cuts, 3 yard backings, our small cosmetic bag kits, our junior 2.5'“ strip rolls, and best of all, our amazing Florida fat quarter “table” of beauties. 

**We had awesome swag bags, with a free pattern for using this year’s squares. It contained a junior “jelly roll”, aka, 2.5” strips roll, a fat quarter, a pattern, a snack and an acrylic 6” ruler with “Quilted Twins” name on it.

**We had items available at every price point, from $1 fat quarters to $150 quilt kits! We shopped for months, looking for bargains, so we could pass them along to hoppers and visitors who weren’t even hoppers. Not shown, but we did have some crochet and felt kits that non sewists could enjoy!

**We decided to make a $10 kit, which made up two cosmetic bags and used small pieces. This was a win-win, as we were able to use TINY scraps up, meaning very little true waste, and we had an inexpensive bag set of two for those who needed a small, affordable project, which entitled them to earn the FREE Swag bag with $10 purchase.

This cosmetic bag was a huge hit with the customers.

From the outset, we knew we wanted to make a kit that was totally affordable, 100% shop hop memorabilia, and priced at $10 or less. We worked SUPER hard to create this absolutely adorable Nantucket Cosmetic bag, using Moda’s Free pattern. Becky cut hundreds upon thousands of little squares of all of the SHOP HOP fabric. She made nearly 250 of these cute little bag kits, and most are sold out! We do have some, still, however, but they keep selling daily! If you want a kit or two of your own, click HERE.

**Our hoppers loved, loved, loved looking through the beautiful fat quarters. Now those of you who haunt our store regularly know that we don’t normally have fat quarters. But, we set them out for these two months. For now we still haven’t taken them down. Mainly due to sheer exhaustion, but we did bring out the pieces again, and stacked our fat quarters three high!

Our table of Florida fat quarters - so much beauty here!

**We also only had 2 days without SHOP HOP magazines. Who would have thought we’d sell 578! I thought 440 was pushing it!!! We had 800 visitors during the month of March alone. I began to be concerned that we might run out of Swag bags! But we never did, so that was great!

We have 3 magazines left. If you want one, click HERE.

**We welcomed Flat Wendy, Flat Jen, and Flat Koleene with all the pageantry and fanfare we could muster, along with the pomp and ceremony that flat people require! We did leave Flat Koleene in to stand guard all night one night. We figured she could enjoy looking at all the pretty fabrics!

**We had a beautiful display of this year’s Shop Hop fabrics, last year’s Shop Hop fabrics, and all the fabrics from the magazine for the HOPPERS to see when they came in. We sold a LOT of last  year’s border stripe and LOTS of the panels from 2023.

**We were organized! We had labeled boxes with our kits, patterns and kit parts down in Rachael’s Chop Shop. We had a neat display showing all the kits that we had available.

We also had precut all the kits and the fat quarter bundles so it was quick and easy to just pluck them up and go! We had signs EVERYWHERE if it was something associated with the Shop Hop, as shown in the Fat Quarter shelf below!

**We also introduced two new quilt kits and two new bag kits halfway through to keep us, as well as the consumers, interested! We loved having the Florida state outline kit and the Cool Caribbean kit to bring out at the beginning of April. Also, halfway through April I finally got my letters cut out! You can click on each picture and you should be taken to that item on the website for more photos.

What did we do wrong?

**We had several things which Becky made up as samples for people to get, but we never even got them out of the back room. We had aprons, small bags, zipper bags and clam up style bags that never came out of the back room. There wasn’t time to make up kits, and we knew we’d be asked for them.

**Our biggest surprise was the absolutely adorable BOHO shopping bag, which hardly moved at all. I mean, we gave it prime billing in the store, so everyone could see it, yet we sold very few. That was a huge disappointment, as we had worked hard to get the pompom trim, and get the patterns made up. Maybe we’ll sell a few more before too long. It’s quite adorable! If you want one, we have lots of the kits made up HERE.

**We also ended up with at least 100 bolts, if not 150 bolts of fabric that were not even touched, as it seems as though every store out there had the fabric this year! Thankfully, most of what’s left is blenders, so those will go eventually! (Need to make things in pinks, oranges and yellows!) So, you can say that I tremendously overbought fabric! Bad guess on my part.

**We also had purchased three of the SHOP HOP fabrics in knits. We have yet to bring those out and get them up on the site for all of you who are reading this. We grossly overestimated our ability to get things done. I do plan to get those up very soon. You will hear about that in our daily email newsletter!

 

**We offered too many quilt and bag kits, meaning we were going crazy trying to keep up with the cutting, but they did make for a nice display. Having the backings ready to go helped with the cutting and checkout lines!

**I also haven’t gotten my Spartina bags and pajamas up on the website. I had purchased those in March of 2023 in order to get on the 2023 Shop Hop. However, they didn’t arrive for the 2023 Hop, so I thought, “No problem. There’s always next year.” Well, now some of the products have made it to the photo taking station, but haven’t progressed any further. I’ll let you know when I get those beautiful Spartina bags up on the site. (However, I have begun using one of the Spartina purses and I do love it!).

They are in the store, so you can come in and purchase them, but not up on the site yet.

Conclusion

When I tell you that the month of March was like drinking from a fire hydrant all month long, from early morning until I fell into bed exhausted each night, I’m not exaggerating.

There wasn’t time to think of much else… “Do I have swag bags? Do I need to cut more kits? Have I answered Koleene’s inquiries yet?” and so forth. Becky and I would quickly chat each night from our computers to see what had to be done to be ready for the next day. (Keep in mind, I’m still running the regular business, too. Paperwork, pallets and payroll, etc)

Meeting with reps was post poned or cancelled. There was no free time to do such frivolous things like that. One stopped in to see us, and saw immediately why she couldn’t take me away. I was running back up register, and I was super busy, even as backup!

On April 5, Becky climbed onto a plane and headed back to Poland, taking a lot of my MoJo with her, as well as a lot of the customers’ MoJo. We went about 2 weeks with maybe 50 to 80 hoppers during the two weeks combined. It was a rough period.

I pretty much hit the “I can’t get out of bed” stage by April 20, but I continued to push myself through to the end. I have no idea how those without as good of a team as we had, ever did it!”

During the last two weeks of April, things picked up, and as we got closer to the end, I could see that we could possibly meet or beat last year’s 1206 visitor count, so I put on a push to get people in who hadn’t been in yet this season!

On Saturday, April 27, we met the number, 1206, then on Monday, April 29, we opened so hoppers could come, and I “stuck” around 4 or 5 more passports that day; however, we then finished up on Tuesday with several more visitors, bringing our grand total to 1221. 

We’re grateful to be doing this SHOP HOP, even though sales were down substantially this year from last. However, we did expect that, since in general, people are watching their pennies, nickels and dollars! We knew that a lot of second year hoppers hadn’t completed their first year’s projects, so they were going to be a bit more cautious with purchasing kits and fabrics.

We had lots of first timers come in, and in general, we had a good time with ladies and gentlemen as they finished up their regions or just came in to check us out!


Will we do it again? Most certainly. However, we most certainly will NOT have 7 quilt kits and a total of 6 different bag kits!

In fact, we’ve been asked for projects for next year already, and we’re still too tired to think straight!

I will be offering MORE of the fruit Junior 2.5” strip rolls at $6 each HERE, and if you need more of the Fat Quarters to go with the one that you got in your swag bag, you can get that here! One bundle is HERE and the other bundle is HERE.

We cannot thank you enough for all of your support!

—Rachael and Becky with Ken and the team here at Quilted Twins

Rachael Woodard7 Comments