Dog Beds at the Scottish Game Fair

We had a lovely Scone game fair hosted by the Scottish Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust held at Scone Palace in Perth.

We drove down the road (this is the closest one we do, so it’s almost local) and made it in three hours on Thursday afternoon. With a big box van and a massive trailer for the dog beds you have to make sure not to get into the many speed cameras that seem to be well placed, especially between Aberdeen and Dundee. The limit is lower for a van with a trailer than for a car.

We just cook at the fair as we bring some simple food and an Ozpig, which is a form of barbecue. We had forgotten the plates, so we used some of the fire wood as a plate.

We brought well over a hundred dog beds, but as you will all know, our repertoire is now so big that no matter what we bring, there are still some styles of dog beds that the customers want and which we didn’t bring. So we have now decided to give free delivery on everything sold at the game fairs. This also means that when our customers see these big, heavy and sturdy dog beds, they don’t have to give up on buying due to the thought of dragging it all the way to the furthest away part of the car park, they just have to give their name and address (and their money) and then the bed arrives at their house shortly after the fair.

We brought Gaia as she is a nice little dog to take along to the show. She just walks about and takes little outings, only very close by. When you go to the showers, she sits nicely outside.

It got really hot Friday evening when we went out to collect Toves car in the car park, but Gaia kept running. She was puffing and panting a lot on the way back, so I had to take a close up photo of her brilliant teeth…..

We did have bad weather on Saturday and despite the fact that we sell waterproof dog beds, it is not conductive to good sales when everyone is totally miserable and wet. We also get mud smeared from everyone’s wellie boots on to the dog beds in the stand. It is of course just part of the territory and customers understand the problem. Luckily half our stock is wipe able dog beds, so we simply take some baby wipes and clean them off. In a way this makes it easier to show case how good dog beds we sell.

Gaia didn’t like the rain too much (shhhh, she is a German Wirehaired Pointer, supposed to be very tough), so at one point she jumped in to the back of the trailer sitting in all the plastic wrapped dog beds, hiding out of the rain. Nigel Deer from the Kennel Club thought this was hilarious and took a picture, which ended up on our Tuffies Facebook.

We had a great show with many good sales and orders and even more lovely comments about how great our products are. We came away on a high.