If you came to me as a client or prospect, and told me “I’m starting a new company,” I’d be sorely tempted to recommend caution, for in the recession, not to mention the goverment’s “let’s spend our way out of having no money” mentality, now may not be the best time to start a new venture.

Then again, it may be the BEST time to do so.

So, in the spirit of “eating my own dog food,” that’s exactly what I’m doing. Next week, I’m taking my latest invention – a six-instrument guitar stand – to exhibit at the Dallas Guitar Show (April 17-19, if you’re interested).

Here’s my idea. I’ve come up with a guitar stand that is beautiful (it looks like a piece of Mission-style/Arts & Crafts/Stickley-style furniture), it’s portable (sets up or tears down in under 60 seconds), durable (made of solid oak), and stable (with a low center of gravity, it’s not prone to tip-overs like lightweight metal stands can be). I’ve gotten such positive feedback on it from just about everybody, that I feel as if I can’t pass up this opportunity. The Dallas Guitar Show is the largest exhibition of its kind in the country – maybe even the world. A booth there should give me a way to definitively prove the market potential of the stands. This way, I can spend under $1,000, and test the market. I’m hoping to come away from the show with a fistfull of orders. If I do, I’ll be able to bootstrap production, prepaid. If I don’t get orders, I’ll be able to rethink my plans without losing a boatload of cash.

Before I leave, I’m going to be feverishly working on my website (gotta enable it for mobile phones…the Dallas Convention Center wants $250 for WiFi access – and I’m not gonna do it). It’s been some time since I’ve done a trade show. Knowing how to do tradeshows (and having seen people do them the wrong way) means I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then, so I won’t screw things up. Bootstraping this as I am, I’ve got virtually no margin for error. That makes things both exciting and terrifying at the same time. I’ll report back here as things progress.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 8:21 pm and is filed under advertising, marketing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.