LDF Online Showcase 2026 – Exhibitor Confirmation Letter
LDF Online Showcase:
August 28th – September 3rd 2026
Access times for buyers:
11am Aug 28th – 5pm Sept 3rd
(10am Aug 28th for LDF Members)
Access times for exhibitors:
10am Aug 28th – 5pm Sept 3rd
Deadline for Content:
Photos & text August 14th
Thank you for booking your space in the 2026 LDF Online Showcase. This is our 9th edition of the Online Showcase & it is popular as ever with so many customers who can’t travel to London but enjoy scrolling the showcase, viewing your incredible work.
Although it is online, it is really important that you prepare your website/web store (if you have one) in advance of the showcase so customers find it easy to locate the items you are promoting on your showcasevpage. The exhibitors who spend time working on their photos, their website, shipping costs etc seem to be the ones who do best in our showcases.
We also need as much time as possible to input all content into the showcase. It is a huge amount of work, so we would appreciate you sending photos etc as soon as possible. I am happy to receive photos in batches as they are ready, rather than waiting for them all to be ready at once. Deadline for photos, links & text is AUGUST 14th, but we can continue inputting right up to the day of the showcase, so we are happy for you to send us a few photos after this date if you need.
We don’t expect everyone to have all brand new items listed on your Showcase page but it is a good idea to have some new exclusive items that you launch during the showcase, or you have new photos of items you wish to highlight to make your page fresh. Your page will be less successful if you just put up the same pictures time after time.
Here are a few reminders & pointers that may help you prepare.
OUR WEBSITE: Our beautiful website will get very busy in the run up to the show. We get at a minimum of 3000 visitors to our website in a usual month, but this increases drastically during our live shows & it increases to around 8 000 visitors in the week of the showcase. There is a special page “EXHIBITOR INFO” that you can visit to check information. It should have all the information you need to prepare for the show. More will be added regularly. (there is a direct link to this page from the homepage on our website)
You will also automatically have a “Business Card” on THE LIST. Please check links are working & we are using the correct photo. We expect you to have a reciprocal link from your site to ours.
CATALOGUE & ADVERTISING: We will be producing a digital A4 show catalogue that we will email to our top 500 customers in advance of the Showcase. This has been a big success & really appreciated by many collectors. The exhibitor list will feature all craftsmen taking part in the showcase but we will have some advertising space too. These spaces always sell out so please book your space now if you haven’t already done so. It is definitely worthwhile having an advert to highlight your work. Form is attached below. Artwork is required by August 1st.
E-FLYER: To promote the show, we have designed an e-flyer that you can send out to potential customers. You can download our E-Flyer HERE.
YOUR PAGE: Please be aware that the showcase will look different depending what device it is viewed on. We do recommend that customers view the site on a tablet, laptop or computer to get a better experience, but it can also be easily viewed on a mobile phone. We are not able to adjust the layout of pages individually, so all pages will have the same template. For this reason, we recommend you send landscape images where possible. We will check all photos, so if the format needs adjusting, we can do this for you.
Your page in the showcase will include the following:
Business name, you name & location: At the top of your page, you will have your business name, your personal name & your location. This information will be taken from your contract.
Shop button: This is the quick link for customers to find your selling page. It maybe on your website, your etsy store or other lebstore. This makes it quick & easy for customers to buy from you. If you have both a webshop & an Etsy store, please make it clear which you want us to use for the shop button. If you do not have a webshop or etsy store, there will be no SHOP button on your page & customers will contact you by email or phone to purchase items. This works very well in most cases.
Photo Gallery: All pages can have up to 12 photos displayed. (you may have paid extra for more photos in which case you can have up to 20 photos) Most important.. Photos should be LANDSCAPE. If you are not confident in taking photos, please read the ‘Photos for the Showcase’post which should help you. We also recommend that you don’t add too much text to your photos as we can add a caption underneath which usually looks better.
Links: Under your photos, you will have buttons that connect to your website, email & social media. We will take these links from your contract. PLEASE make sure these links are correct. We will try to test all links & will not add any links that aren’t working. Both your website & Etsy store are accessible from the buttons below the photos, but the SHOP button is a quick & easy way for customers to get straight to your main selling page online.
Text: Underneath your links will be a write up about you & your work. This can be up to approx. 200 words long. Customers really enjoy reading these & we recommend, if you have taken part in previous online shows, you try to alter your text every time. We recommend that you have one paragraph about the history of you & your business & then the second paragraph can be updated for each online show about new items you have been working on, stories about the past few months etc etc.
OVER TO YOU: Once the customer has left your page in our showcase, it will be up to you to make sure they can find what they want easily. It is important to spend time working on your webshop or etsy store before the showcase to get it ready. Make sure the items shown on your page of the showcase are easy to find in your webstore. They should be listed first if possible. Some craftsmen had a special Etsy page created for the showcase which goes live when the showcase opens. This worked well too.
Please remember, that having an Etsy/webstore does cost money, but bear in mind that if you were selling in a shop, the shopkeeper would have to put the price of your items up to cover his costs of rent, staff, electrics etc. (hence a Trade price for Trade buyers!) I think that now there is so much trading online, this gets forgotten & if you are selling directly to the customer, you must add your costs on top of your basic price. This is how retail has always worked.
I would also like to request that items shown in the Showcase are not sold on an online auction site. This has caused problems in previous years, with many disappointed customers. I know it is hard to price your work, but making people bid against each other is very frustrating especially when we are publicizing the Showcase as a sale not an auction.
Remember that customers may need to contact you with questions or messages during the showcase, so make sure you are checking your email & social media etc regularly.
POSTAGE & PACKING: You should aim to be posting orders to the UK & overseas, so make sure you have prices ready before the showcase so you can inform customers of the costs. Remember both you & the customers have saved money by not going to a LIVE event, so you may be happy to subsidise postage a little to help their costs, but they should be equally happy to pay postage of items. Make sure you have all the up-to-date info on postage available. From my experience, I can still easily post items to the EU & the US from the UK & it is definitely worth the effort if you can, but rules are changing all the time so make sure you have up to date information. If you are not able to post to certain countries, please make this clear in your text.
LDF LOYALTY CARD: We have over 50 LDF members who we will allow access to the site from 10am on August 28th.
SPECIAL OFFERS: Some exhibitors offered a discount to customers shopping from their site during the Showcase. This worked well. It was usually a discount code that could be used on their webshop or Etsy Store.
FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM: We will be posting a lot on our Facebook & Instagram in the run up & during the show. We may use photos sent in by you for the showcase to promote the event & you personally. The showcase is a special event because we hope you will create items that are new & maybe haven’t been seen on Social Media before. We ask that you do not show all of your new items for the showcase in advance but announce them once the show is open as this keeps the excitement building.
SPAM EMAILS: Please be aware that LDF exhibitors are still receiving emails from various companies saying they can give you advance access to the attendance list for the KDF show or cheap hotel rooms. Any email that is officially from LDF will be signed by me or Lola & be sent from the @dollshouseshowcase.com email address. Any emails about the show from other email addresses are SCAMS! Please also be aware that Scammers may try to contact you during the showcase. We recommend that you take a deposit for any orders from customers, especially if you do not know them.
YOUR WORK: The Showcases remains special events because of your fantastic work. Just because the event is online, does not mean that the work shown should be of a lower quality. Customers are reassured that we, at LDF, always check craftsmen’s work before accepting them for our shows & our Online Showcase is no different. Do not display work that is not up to scratch!
FUTURE SHOWS: We are looking forward to the KDF Christmas Show in November. This is now a TWO DAY show, but we do have a limited number of ‘shared tables’ available, meaning you can do one day of the show & another exhibitor will do the other day. Please contact me for more info on this. If you have not signed up for this show yet, please ask for a contract soon as it is filling up. Information on the KDF Summer Show 2027 will also be sent out shortly.
OFFICE OPENING TIMES: The LDF office is usually open between 11.00am – 5.00pm, but if we are out, please email us. Answer machine messages are not checked regularly, but emails are usually answered within 48 hours, so if you do not hear back, it means we did not get the message, so please email again.
Charlotte Stokoe
LDF organiser
charlotte@dollshouseshowcase.com
