The Board Chronicles: Fine Craft Show 2017

The Board Chronicles is an ongoing series of articles about the adventures of Mrs M’s Handmade as a vendor at community festivals & craft fairs. Mrs M’s subsidiary, Mr M’s Woodshop, has been approved to create this chronicle for the good of vendorkind.

The Fine Craft Show – now in its 26th year! – is Santa Clarita’s largest city-sponsored vendor event. This is one of only 3 events that we have done each of the 4 years that we’ve gone a-vendoring.

It was our # 1 Santa Clarita event in 2015, but fell to # 4 in 2016. We love local … but how much will we love this event in 2017?

This show used to be a bigger deal, with perhaps 100 vendors spread across a park and adjacent baseball field visible from one of the major streets in Newhall/Valencia: Lyons Avenue. Before we were vendors, though, the event began to lose vendors, and had shrunk to about 40 vendors in the park. This year, the city proudly grew the event to 60 vendors, and used those vendor fees to add more marketing. They did social media, some local print, and also had flags on Lyons, making sure that everyone driving by would know why there were so many shade canopies set up in the park.

But would it be enough? Would we see the event return to the glory we found in 2015?

New Ideas

I made a new vertical display that had its first showing at this event. Read about that process here. You can also get a sense of my booth display evolution (which has been extreme) by reading this.
We were in our 4th location at this event in 4 years. After pleading my case with the promoter, there was no joy: they will not let me get my trailer close to my booth. The postage stamp of a parking lot only has about a dozen parking spaces, so trailer parking is just not something they are prepared to accommodate. That means that I’ll probably have a 150 yard trek to the trailer for load out, the worst of the year.

Observations

Event # 8 of 15 in our 4th quarter. Over the hump. Finally.
Knowing the load-in problem – and being local – I showed up early. I arrived at the park at 10am to load in, and only had the regular park patrons there with a nearly empty parking lot. My load in was fine and only about a 40 yard push. My trailer was out of the parking lot before the rest of the vendors arrived. I love local.
Love meeting vendor fans of this blog at events. There were 3 at this event. Love it!
Lovely weather for events. Saturday was blue skies and the slightest of breezes. It was enough, though. One vendor was set up with all 3 walls up on her canopy. She was facing into the wind … with no weights on the canopy. Her giant sail of nylon caught the breeze that was barely a breeze and tumbled. I ran to secure her canopy – upside down! – while she began recovery. Luckily, no one was hurt. It was 10:43am.
Oh so many friends come by to say hello.
Oh so many customers love my work and already have my boards at home.
I love local.
The cutest little girl had parents buy her 3 animals from the Zoo that is ZooSoapia. I love carefully accepting ducks & dogs & such from little hands after they’ve made their selection.
We use Paypal, and have a card reader that connects to my smartphone via bluetooth to do the transactions. It will do any kind of transaction: chip, swipe, or wireless. I did my first wireless transaction by accident. The lady gave me her card, I waved it over the reader while I was getting situated … and it charged the card. It all worked correctly, but it did surprise me that it happened with a wave of a card. RFID (Radio-frequency identification) is a thing!
I was alone in the booth; a lady was looking at Mrs M’s display.
- She said, “Are you cruelty free?”
- I said, “Uhhhh.”
- I said, “Oh. YES! Of course! We are cruelty free.”
- Once I recovered, I remembered that this means we don’t do animal testing with our products. You have to know the lingo. And, as Mrs M says, the only animals we test on are our family.
Load out was as I feared. We were packed up after 90 minutes or so, and then I had to find a way to get the trailer nearby for loading. The tiny parking lot was a no go, of course; there were still many vendors loading out and complaining that they couldn’t get closer in. That left the only trailer parking to be on Lyons Avenue, a major thoroughfare. Options were:
- Wait until the parking lot clears, which will probably be another hour or so. At least.
- Park down by the batting cages. Hop the curb with the rolling carts to get to the trailer. Every load will have to roll about 150 yards on the sidewalk.
- Park closer in on Lyons Avenue, and take the merchandise on the rolling cart overland (no sidewalks). The big, wooden roll-off carts, meanwhile will have to become unlicensed vehicles on Lyons to go into the traffic lane, rolling around the parked vehicles, and then roll up the ramp of the parked trailer.
I chose option # 3. We didn’t die, and I didn’t get a ticket. We did get loaded 2 hours and 55 minutes after the event closed. Thank goodness the drive home is only 15 minutes.
Like the cross town Summit Holiday Boutique, this event disappointed this year. We were down about 20% from last year, which was in turn down 25% from the year before. No clue why, of course. Phase of the moon? The weekend before Thanksgiving? You might argue that the cutting board market is saturated … but that doesn’t explain why Mrs M’s sales were down, too. Sales trends are so often a mystery. Unfortunately.
But, we have declining revenues and an impossible load out. And this is a hometown event. Hmmmmmmmm.

The Food

Saturday Breakfast: Hello, old friend.

Saturday Lunch: A burger from the Patty Wagon food truck, on site. Yum.

Saturday Snack: Chocolate pudding, from The Pudding Truck. Who knew?

Saturday Dinner: Leftovers. All we could manage after a disappointing day.

Sunday Breakfast: Bagels & cream cheese, at home. It’s my current go to.

Sunday Lunch: Back to the Patty Wagon. It was the only choice.

Sunday Snack: A donut from whatever food truck was doing donuts. Best $2 donut I’ve ever had. And, yes, it’s the only one.

Sunday Dinner: Dinner at a favorite local restaurant … and I found foreign objects in my food. These were identified as metal pieces from a scrub pad. The restaurant was very responsive; the manager comped my meal and the chicken sandwich they made for me to take home. Didn’t matter: I lost my appetite.

The Facts

Total miles driven: 22
Booth cost: $350
Food cost: $185
Travel cost: $12
Total sales: $1,536
Net Revenue (does not include product cost): $989
# of people we met during the event from the producer: 2
Visits in our booth by a promoter’s representative: several
Saturday alarm: nope
Sunday alarm: nope
# transactions: 63
# soap & lotion vendors: There were 4 soap vendors (too many for this size of an event). At least 2 of the others were local vendors with limited experience, it seemed. Welcome!
# woodworking vendors: There were 5 other woodworkers, 3 of which had cutting boards. None matched my variety & depth for cutting boards, of course, but there were definitely other people offering their wooden objects for sale. Two of them are fans of this blog (!).
Edge grain vs. end grain: 10:1
Returning next year? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.