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.
Three days vendoring with nominal payback … but wha’cha gonna do. In for a penny….
This was the 3rd event in this series. Velda did day 1 for doTerra, and I ended up doing days 2 & 3 as Mr M’s Woodshop. We went into this day with very low expectations, and exceeded them. Barely.
You have to be happy when you exceed expectations, right?
New Ideas
- It was too hot to change shirts after I set up (and what was the point?). So, I wore a plain blue t-shirt for the Blues. How hot was it? Late in the day, my phone told me it was 86* … and it felt cool.
Observations
- First comment of the day: “Wow!” when someone saw the chess boards. If only they would have bought one!
- I’m a live music snob. After several years running the concerts at Magic Mountain, I just can’t tolerate poor performances. In this case, the musicians were very good, and the sound guy delivered the Worst. Sound. Ever.
- The one sale of the day happened while I was out of the booth, talking to a Damsel in Distress (that’s what her shirt said anyway). Anyway, mid-sentence I noticed Velda had a customer and the deal was all but done when I got back to the booth. Maybe I should let Velda do more of the talking (insert snappy one-liner here).
- Driving home, just south of the park entrance, is an underpass to get to the freeway onramp. I wasn’t paying attention to the car ahead of me … but as I drove to the onramp, well-timed firecrackers went off in the lane next to me just as I went through the underpass. Nice acoustics amplified their sound. I said a bad word and didn’t wreck the Jeep.
- “At least we got a free concert!”
The Food
Saturday Dinner: Best event food ever! 
Velda’s begun to prepare cheese & cracker platters for us to eat at events. We are:
- Avoiding event food
- Not waiting in 30 minute food lines
- Demonstrating in the booth how nicely the cheese boards look when used well
- Eating better
- Sharing dinner with our good friend Jan at this event. Lovely!
The Facts
- Total miles driven: 38
- Booth cost: $35
- # of people we met during the event from the producer: 2
- Total sales: $140
- # containers of product taken: 10
- # boards available: 83
- Saturday alarm: nope
- # transactions: 1
- # soap & lotion vendors: 1
- # woodworking vendors: 1
- Edge grain vs. end grain: 0:1
Boards sold: 1
The board sold was a custom order end grain, 12×16 with juice groove. No problem!
