The Board Chronicles: 4th of July Street Fair 2018

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.

It’s become our tradition.

This is our 4th year celebrating our nation’s independence through vendoring on Main Street in Ventura, CA. Read about the first 3 events here: 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Ventura’s a beach community, about an hour due west of our home in Santa Clarita. History has taught us that it’s definitely a great place for us to go a-vendoring.

We don’t do fireworks on the 4th, but we do watch the parade of Red, White & Blue go by our booth. It’s a wonderful thing.

New Ideas

I’m embracing my inner foodie. I’ve made a new batch of signs that are all food themed, and I’m going to put up all of my mesh walls so I can hang them. That means my traditional open corner that allows 2-sided viewing of cutting boards will go away … now, I’m using the open corner for sign display on the outside of the booth. That’s how a traditional 2D artist displays their work. Just sayin’.
The new worry: will curbing the cutting board display hurt those sales? Is trading sign display for cutting board visibility a bad thing?

Observations

Why do events always start at 4 in the morning?
On the road shortly after 5a. We can do this. We have done this.
We’ve got the routine pretty much down at this point. We arrived at the event at 6:10a, and both of our neighbors were already well into their set-ups. We were able to load in with a minimum of trouble. From there, it was a rush to set-up, because we know this is an early crowd. The 10am official start means nothing.
The signs are an immediate hit. 3 are sold before set-up is done.
I have no inventory to replace signs when they sell (sigh).
My neighbor, across the aisle, is a direct competitor for Mrs M with bath bombs, lotions, and such. Direct competitor. Apparently the promoter (the city of Ventura) does not care.
At all.
Such is the case at many city-sponsored events. They may know how to stage a vendor event, but that doesn’t mean they know/care about the subtleties of managing vendor relationships.
I had a manly encounter with a woodworker:
- He walks into the booth.
- He fondles a board.
- He fondles another board.
- He looks at me, smiles, nods.
- I reciprocate with a smile and a nod.
- He leaves.
- We communicated everything we needed to communicate, right?
The stream of humanity by the booth was impressive. People are definitely here … but here to shop? Vendors always try to count shopping bags as they walk by the booth … and there are never enough, it seems. We were busy throughout the day, thank goodness.
Lady holding a plaque: “Can you cut on this?”
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
For reference, Mrs M’s all-time favorite question, from a customer holding a boar of soap: “How do you use this?”
When appropriate, I did mention my Kickstarter campaign to anyone that might care. Former customers, walk-in prospects … I did talk about supporting my Kickstarter campaign. Wasn’t this a good transition for my naked pitch? If you’re interested, see the video & read all about it, here.
We never had time to go walkabout, which is a good thing, I guess. Therefore, we have no idea who else is at this event beyond our small circuit for lunch & such around the neighborhood. We did hear that there are a lot of soapmakers.
Woodworkers? No clue.
We began tearing down at 4:45p. Banners. Price tags. A “soft close,” which is totally against our nature. Sales, though, had largely stopped before 4pm. We had no late surge on this day.
Sales were down a bit from last year, but far beyond the 2 years prior. Not a record setter, but definitely worthwhile.
Requests were for a rooster board (sigh), smaller Lazy Susans (sigh) and a dachshund board (NO. Why do people want to cut on dogs?).

The Food

Best Meal: Velda bought sushi for herself & teriyaki chicken for me from a nearby Japanese restaurant. Very well done: not fair food.

The Facts

Total miles driven: 115
Booth cost: $385
Food cost: $41
Travel cost: $60
Total sales: $2,099
Net Revenue (does not include product cost): $1,613
# of people we met during the event from the producer: none
Visits in our booth by a promoter’s representative: several by the anonymous “block captain”
Wednesday alarm: 4a
# transactions: 71
# soap & lotion vendors: Many, we were told
# woodworking vendors: No clue
Edge grain vs. end grain: 33:0
Returning next year? Yup