The Galesburg Sewing Center has been located on Main Street, Galesburg, Illinois since 1981.  Galesburg is a small town of just 30,000 residents and we are lucky to be in the center of it.  We are a Brother, Bernina & Handi Quilter machine retailer and a full line Kimberbell dealer.  Here at our little Galesburg store, we have two staff members and the machine service department.  We have been benefiting from being a Certified Kimberbell Event dealer since February 2019.

The Summer Nights One Day Event has such great projects, they were loved by all.  We hosted 22 attendees, in store, over 3 days for this fun event.

For our décor, we threw some logs on the fire, strung patio lights and red, white & blue decorations from the ceiling and covered tables with red and blue checked table cloths.  Sunflowers and canning jar candles added a special touch to our table display.

For our lunch menu, we grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, chicken and corn on the cob and served with all the picnic sides one could imagine.  Afternoon snack time was topped off with roasted s’mores.

Since 99% of our attendees own a large combo machine and a smaller class machine or just bought a machine, we play games during our breaks.  This time Kimberbell Bingo was the favorite because we play until everyone wins!  This is a great game to introduce and explain Kimberbell products.  Each winner had their choice of mustard or ketchup.  We put a red or yellow Kimberbell fat quarter in a squeeze bottle as their prize.

Next we played “We are going on a camping trip”.  In this game each attendee was given a wooden stick pencil and paper.  I had to search hundreds of acres of woods to find a lead tree with just the right size branches to make these pencils.  LOL.  They each wrote down the answers to these questions:

• What piece of camping gear would you bring?
• What food item would you bring?  It must start with the first letter of your last name.
• Where would we go?
• What one personal item would you bring?
• What would you sleep in?  This can be a tricky question.
• What activity would you do while camping?
•  Etc.

I then turned their answers into a story for a very interesting camping trip.  It is a great way to get to know your customers.  You find out who likes to camp and who doesn’t, that is for sure.  Most brought along a personal item was a toothbrush.  All attendees received a small keychain flashlight for their next camping trip!

We filled a canning jar with binding clips for a “guess the number of clips” in the jar.  The winner received a package of glow in the dark pins.

Our attendees are pros at completing their projects, so I always have a bonus project to keep them in the store longer.  We may use a Dealer Exclusive project or a Fill in the Blank project, but this time I wanted to sell our overstock of discontinued Cinch bag CDs.  I took a cinch bag project from It’s a Cinch! Gift Bags, Volume 3: Sweet Sentiments and added the firefly jar from the Red, White, & Bloom Book/CD, with a few adjustments, used fabric to coordinate with the Summer Nights fabric kits, added a spool of glow in the dark thread and put the kit in a canning jar.  They don’t get the instructions or design, just the opportunity to create the project in class.  We sold every cinch bag design cd we had in stock as well as most of our Red, White & Bloom Book/CDs by the end of the event.  Plus those who already had these CDs loved learning the techniques and were excited to go home and make more bags.

To top off our events, we use the Shop Owner Rewards items for door prizes.  Between Shop Rewards and other door prizes, everyone leaves a winner!

This event brought in 5 new attendees and 17 regular attendees.  These 17 attendees have every Kimberbell item made and we still sold over $3000 in Kimberbell products and over $9200 in total product sales and future event sign ups.