Hi guys! I didn't write a blog post about last week's market because to be honest the only interesting thing that happened was that we were freezing cold the entire market. It was an acceptable day when it came to sales but we were mostly just excited to go home because by the end of the day we were just cold to the bone.
But the market we had two days ago was a bit more interesting and way more bearable weather wise. So for this market, my boyfriend was not going to be helping because he went to church camp for the weekend so it was just me and my bestie Amaris for the day. We did have to get my dad to help bring everything to the market and to help set up because not everything fits in just my car. It was very humid while we were setting up so it was a bit more stressful in the way that we were all more uncomfortable than usual. When we finished setting up everything, we ended up moving our table and some of our racks around a few times because I really wanted to make sure that, 1. We weren't in anyone else's way and, 2. That we weren't positioned directly under the sun so that our heads didn't get sunburned because a couple markets ago, I got a nice itchy scalp burn, sooo much fun.
As soon as we settled we realized that the wind was coming in big gusts and at one point it made two of our racks roll away into the walk way because unfortunately the racks we have don't have brakes on their wheels. I apologized to the innocent group of people my racks swung into when the wind blew haha. After that happened I grabbed some string and tied all of the racks together and to the sides of the tent.
Our mirror fell a couple of times but it seemed pretty resilient to breaking at first, so I left it up and tried to position it a little bit better. Later, a much bigger gust of wind blew and there went our mirror. I heard a loud thud, a crack, and some people go, "oooooo". It was technically usable but I decided to put it away just because the wind was so unpredictable and I didn’t want to risk anyone getting hurt trying to catch it falling again.
This day, for the first 5 hours after setting up, was excruciatingly slow. Like, when I say slow, I mean like we didn't break even for the cost of the vending space until 4 PM and the market ends as 6. We tried to keep our hopes up but it was just very brutal in terms of sales. At one point we were literally looking up prayers to money gods and reciting them. I was texting my boyfriend about it and he made a good point, we're pretty sure that a broken mirror is a sign of bad luck so for a while we thought we were just doomed. But thankfully, it looked like praying to the money gods might have worked because after 4:30 we had a good amount of business and by the end of the day we had made a number that wasn't ideal but it was one of those acceptable revenue days that you just can't really be mad at. We just felt super lucky that somehow we made a come back from being so far behind for a very long time.
We had some good conversations throughout the day with some interesting people and overall it was a pretty good day. I'm proud of us for keeping our vibes in check even when for so long it looked like we were just going to leave with $20 profit. It definitely wasn't easy and I would not have been able to do it without Amaris there with me. So that's pretty much it, this market day taught me a lot about myself and in the end I'm thankful for it. For all the people that did come in and buy something from us on Sunday, your business meant just that much more to us because we were reallllly struggling ;) THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU <3
Have a wonderful, beautiful day and let's wish Amaris and my other friend Emily good luck this weekend because they are going to be running the market without me as I am going on vacation and I actually accidentally booked this market not remembering that I was going out of town sooooooooo, fun!
March 8th, 2022
