I had mentioned that this weekend I was doing Southdown Plantation's Marketplace. I wanted to share a little about this event. One this was a total snafu by one person that affected everyone else and one was kinda cool. For a point of reference I am including Southdown's website and fb page.
Southdown does their event 2x/year. This was our 6th time in attendance, and we have not skipped any since we started. It is about 5 minutes from our home so it's our shortest commute to any show. It has been going on for decades and they have developed what seems to be a good check in system. They have set times and place for check in.
300+ booth spaces are available for the show. Some artists or crafters will take 2-3 booth spaces. All booths are 10'x10'. I think any person wanting more than 3 has to get special permission but I have not seen any with more than 3, and having 3 is unusual. Set up can start on Thursday till dark, and then on Friday till dark. Or you can go as early as about 5:30 on Saturday to set up.
We had our same spot, #55. Dh dropped me off near the office to check in and he pulled in up to our booth area to start unloading. Only numbers were not like on the map. They were all screwy. Come to find out (from one of the staff) one person with a booth set up Thursday after the staff left. Only he set up in the aisle and not where the row of booths was. The staff didn't know this till after a few more had set up the next morning. This threw everyone off. The staff went around and moved all the booth markers for everyone else. The reason the staff did not move canopies and tents is because they cannot go into unattended booths and touch the artists/crafters stuff without them being there. This is the first time that this has happened since we started attending about 3 years ago. Otherwise, the show went off without a hitch as far as we could tell.
The cool thing that happened was there was a drone overhead for a while filming the event. Dh thinks a local production company owns one and that the plantation rented its services to get footage for a commercial or YouTube video for future advertising. Since the plantation is a charitable organization they may have had the drone svcs. donated somehow. I must say it was pretty cool to see one that close up for the first time.
Our sales were good for us. Our busiest hour was the first how, the 8:00 hour. We are tracking our inventory with my square now and it tracks sales by the hour. We will not let this one snafu keep us from going again. I feel they will work on keeping that from happening again.
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