The succulent society that I belong to always gets a stand at the yearly bonsai show and those of us that wish to sell plants can do so, in return for being there over the 3 days that the show runs and helping to promote the society.
This is a good time to make space on the greenhouse shelves and start to move some of the seedlings that I have been growing for a few years now. I had a lot of smaller plants that I sold cheaply and by the end of the show I had made about 150HBD from my small corner of the stand so I was happy.
A natural bonsai, Pachypodium bispinosum
The real thing, a willow Leaf Fig
I forgot to take a picture at the start of the show so this is my after display, after I had sold about 30% of my stock: I had Haworthia, Frailea cacti and a few others, mesembs and Frithia humilis, Euphorbia as well as Dioscoria seedlings and a few other plants that I had propagated.
There were quite a few people who had been to the pot table and now were on the hunt for a little plant to put in there and they mainly need advice on what would be suitable.
Although I sold quite a few small plants this way, you need to sell a lot before your earnings add up and I'm not a commercial grower so that's not a great sales approach for me.
Some other sellers had been trying to solve the same problem and that's an option for next time
A friend of mine makes rather striking mini rockeries and that could be fun to create for the next show. He doesn't sell his but brings them for the exhibition.
As always with plants, flowers sell although getting the plants to co-operate isn't always possible
I usually consider garden ornaments tacky but well, these are cats....
Of course when selling plants, you have to constantly prevent breakage and damage, and it's not only the kids that do it.
I really like trailing forms of bonsai although I prefer succulents, that are happy to be left alone for longer and I get upset when I kill my plants.
A freaky Astrophytum for @ibarra95 - these were ordinary myriostigma that got attacked by thrips or something. After the plants were sprayed, they all turned monstrose and started making really weird Fukuryu
Of course the real test of shows is not to promptly spend all the money you make on new plants. I did buy a few but I also bought quite a few seedlings to grow on for a few more years and then resell. The good part of succulents is that even if they are not sold, next year they are bigger and more valuable. Succulents are slow and it takes a minimum of 2 years to produce a saleable plant. After 5 or 10 years, they look amazing and then you sell them to people who don't have the patience for that and hope like hell that they don't take it home and promptly kill it.
I was satisfied with my first show and I'm busy making plans for next year.