MowryJournal.com   Life's Passions

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.

This will be our 4th consecutive annual trip to the mountains in southern Kern County for the 55th Annual Tehachapi Mountain Festival.

We love this event. You can read about our previous visits: 2017, 2016 and 2015. Note that when Mrs M’s Handmade was just 18 months old, the 2015 event was our Best. Event. Ever.

We love Tehachapi.

Great community. Park atmosphere. Handmade vendors are in the vast majority – and we get to set up on the grass. Live music. Oh, and there’s a carnival, a car show and fair food (we didn’t do any of those!).

We’ve been surprisingly successful at this event over the years, and got a large special order last year that really put me over the top. That’s not expected this year, of course, but we still expect to have another nice jaunt north.

New Ideas

• After putting up our Trimline canopy last year, we return to pop-ups this year. That saves about 30 minutes or so on the set up and the tear down … and since we’re driving home Sunday evening, we thought that was a good idea.

Observations

• Set up began at 3pm Friday afternoon. Heat of the day. We took our time, though, and worked the process until we wanted to quit. Mrs M got most of her product up, but I elected to do my product set up on Saturday morning. Opening was at 10a; we were ready.
• This community comes to the event, and they walk the booths. There’s traffic here, and you just need to find your audience.
• A lady came into the booth and wanted me to do a replacement board for her Hoosier. Huh? Come to find out, this is an old, freestanding kitchen cabinet that has an integrated flour mill below the upper cabinet. I have seen these, but never knew they were named after the state’s nickname where so many of them were made: in Indiana. Who knew?
• A side note: when I write these blogs, I have an opportunity to have the website check them before publication. Basic spelling is checked (I have trained the checker how to spell Padauk, Bubinga & Morado, by the way). Grammar is checked. And, every time I use the word “lady” the checker accuses me of using biased language.
• I’m not biased. I believe people are good, and every female that enters my booth is a lady until she proves otherwise. If that makes me biased, then so be it. I’m not changing. And I calls ’em the way I sees ’em.
• I got a few more chaos boards finished for this event (I had been out for 6 weeks). Those boards are a stopper … but they always inspire people to tell me that they see what I do with my scrap wood. Here’s the board:

Cutting Board 18 – 724. 18 species are in this board! End Grain. Chaos Board.

• Please note I do not make my boards out of scrap. I start with lumber, and I end up at the finish line. Each board is hand selected to be a part of the cutting board. Scrap is what I burn or recycle. Good lumber is what I use. I do get rather insistent when people tell me that I use scrap to make things.
• The price tag on this board is $200. It is not made out of scrap. Nothing I make is out of scrap.
• Rant over.
• We expected this year to be down from the record-setting event last year, and we were not wrong. We didn’t want to be this wrong, however: Saturday was down about 50%. Several other vendors reported similar numbers, unfortunately. Temperatures were in the 90s … the ice cream vendor had a line all day long. Cutting Board sales? Not so much.
• Sunday is another day.
• A pair of ladies (yup) walked by the booth. One observed that it might be fun to get a pig cutting board. Or a bear cutting board. I pointed them both out to her (win!). Come to find out, her family had a cabin complete with a shaped cutting board from the ’30s (!) that was shaped like a pig. Or, probably a bear. They really weren’t sure which. Interesting; I told them how rare a vintage bear board is. Pig boards are out there, but bears? Not so much.
• No sale for me, however.
• This event is sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. During the course of the event, 5 different board members came into the booth to introduce themselves and thank us for our support.
• Promoters, take note. It is nice to feel appreciated.
• We love this event.
• Sunday sales ended up being much better than expected. It didn’t make up for our oh so slow Saturday, but our ending total was much more respectable than we feared the night before. We were down, as expected, but we had a very respectable event. We’re already planning for next year … and we’re going to get bigger.
• Requests were for cribbage boards (2x. I am so over not having these done yet!), more boards with juice grooves, more smaller boards & a sign defining a chicken, since I’ve already defined a pig (hmmmm).

The Food

• Best Meal: Dinner with friends. Does it matter what you eat?
• Honorable Mention: Dinner with friends. See above.

The Facts

• Total miles driven: 148
• Booth cost: $300
• Food cost: $104
• Travel cost: $77
• Total sales: $2,107
• Net Revenue (does not include product cost): $1,626
• # of people we met during the event from the producer: several
• Visits in our booth by a promoter’s representative: several
• Saturday alarm: 6:15a
• Sunday alarm: nope
• # transactions: 95
• # soap & lotion vendors: there was one other
• # woodworking vendors: there was one maker and 2 importers
• Edge grain vs. end grain: 17:1
• Returning next year? Definitely

Boards sold: 18x

Trivets: 4

Large Serving Pieces: 2

Cheese Boards: 2

CNC Signs: 2

Coasters Set: 1

Charcuterie Board: 1

Bread Saw: 1

Clipboard: 1

Custom Order: 1

Small Board: 1

Cutting Board: 1

Heart: 1

Trivet 18 -723. Hard Maple & Padauk.

Coasters 18 – 21. Sapele, Cherry & Black Walnut.

Large Serving Piece 18 – 03. Cherry, Hard Maple & Black Walnut.

Cheese Board 18 – 117. Jatoba, Yellowheart, Cherry, Padauk & Purpleheart. 9″ x 11″ x 5/8″.

Heart 18 – 917.

CNC Sign 18 – 54. Hard Maple. 10″ x 16″.

Charcuterie 18 – 701. Birds Eye Maple. 9″ x 20″ x 3/4″.

CNC Sign 18 – 45. Hard Maple. 10″ x 14″.

Bread Saw 18 – 06. Hard Maple.

Clipboard 18 – 816. Letter size, 1/2″ clip.

Small Board 18 – 213. Black Walnut, Hard Maple, Jarrah, Purpleheart, Bubinga & Bloodwood. 7″ x 12″ x 1-1/4″.

Cutting Board 18 – 725. 18 species are in this board! End Grain. Chaos Board.

Cheese Board 18 – 118. Purpleheart, Hard Maple, Cherry, Bubinga, Bloodwood & Jarrah. 9″ x 11″ x 5/8″.

Large Serving Piece 18 – 15. Cherry, Purpleheart, Bloodwood & Hard Maple.

Trivet 18 – 729. Cherry, Hard Maple, Jatoba & Black Walnut.