we run 2 bookfairs. One at our santa shop parents usally buy books while their kids are in the gym shopping The other one we run in the spring with an ice cream sundae night. We charge 1.00 for the ie cream (tht only covers the cost of ice cream paper goods and toppings) This year we had about 300 people purchase ice cream and sold over 5000.00 in books.
This year we have our fall book fair scheduled at the same time as our Parent/Teacher Conferences. Has that been successful for you Pottsville Mom? Did you do any other events with it? We served dinner, provided babysitting in the gym and a safety seminar at our spring PTC and parents loved that. We talked about doing all that and have the book fair open.
In the fall we run ours with "meet the teacher Night" and the spring one is ran with a family event(this year a luau..next year sock hop). It has helped alot to really advertise them up. Im just wondering if after like 15 years if it's just wore out the market??? Has anyone ever seen events fail after going on so long?
"When you stop learning you stop growing."
One of my friends (from a "wealthy" school) runs their bookfair, and they have a week full of activities that amazes me. It includes a spaghetti dinner one night and lots of other events. But one I remember her talking about as being particularly successful: They have one "Donuts with Dad" morning the bookfair. I forget the amount, but what they made in that one morning is staggering. She said the Dads always spend a lot.
With our own bookfair, we have the Spring date coincide with Spring Fling - our annual event. (Bingo, silent auction, sock hop, etc.) So the bookfair being open is one more activity that night. It's generally pretty successful.
Our sales with Scholastic were fanatastic this year. One thing we did differently was to run the sales out of school hours. The kids could come during recesses and make purchases but during the fall sale we opened on a Saturday morning. We served breakfast, had readings in the library, and Scholastic sent us a Clifford costume to use. For the spring sale, we opened one evening from 4-6pm. When you're sending money to school with your child you only send $5 or $10, but when the parents came along, they were spending $50-$70. We also used the credit card equipment-that boosted the dollars spent too! We had great reps too. They were very helpful and made sure we got all our out of stock orders fast. Maybe, you need to complain to the management in your area and see if they can help you out.
