The Count Down for an Arabian Breeder's Annual Open House Part 3

Part 1

In the vein of things going wrong getting ready for my open house,, I forgot to mention the problems with my advertising. Normally I send out a direct mailing to a list of "show folks." Since the horses I am breeding are specifically being bred to be National calibre show horses.

I get post cards printed up and mail them out about a month ahead of time. The thinking has always been the mailing needed to arrive early enough for people not to have other plans made already. I don't know if that thinking is flawed or not but guess I'm going to find out this year because I didn't get my mailing completed until last Wednesday.

I get mailing labels printed up by a friend of mine who maintains a list for the Daffodil Arabian Horse Assc. I took my blank labels to her at our June meeting. That left plenty of time to get them printed and not put her in a crunch for time.

When she let me know they were ready, I had that bug and was unable to pick them up. By the time I was well enough to go and get them, I couldn't get a hold of her. Turns out she was gone for a week. I was unable to get the labels until 10 days ago.

I got the updates done to my post card and Dave dropped them off at the printers. He stopped by the next day to get them and they hadn't even been printed yet. They had only run a sample for us to approve.

When Dave did come home with the postcards the following day, I about fell through the floor when he told me how much they had cost. He thought it was about the same price we had paid last year but it was many times more. Well, actually it was 4 times more. Instead of printing off 450 postcards, they had printed 450 sheets with 4 postcards per sheet.

It did take a talk with a manager to get that one fixed. Dave had a copy of the original order that stated 400 postcards. Dave had upped the order by 50 and the clerk had written it up incorrectly. Begrudgingly the manager credited us for the difference between the amount they printed and the actual amount we ordered. Thank goodness!!

Most of my postcards were mailed out on the 3rd of July. We ask people to RSVP so we know how many we will be feeding at our picnic that follows the open barn and presentation of horses. People aren't really very good at RSVP ing though. Seems like I aways have about double the number that actually tells me they are coming. And usually some of those that responded don't show up.

This year I also planned on doing some newspaper advertising. I hadn't really decided between the Little Nickle Want Ads or the Tacoma News Tribune but time got away from me and I missed the deadline for the Little Nickle, so the classifieds of the TNT will have to do. I think I'm going to run the add Friday, Saturday and Sunday but guess that will be decided for sure when I hear the rates. I can't make any sense out of their rate page.

To be continued...

For information on my open house visit my website, Rising Rainbow Arabians.



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