I never got around to holding a garage sale this year so I brought a number of boxes of garage sale items.
For this expo Tammy decided to have it only be one day. In the past she had two day expos, and once a three day expo. For two days expos she tried Saturday and Sunday and once a Friday and Saturday expo. Saturday was usually the best day and the other days were slow.
Tammy's last Treasure Market was early September and it was slow. She wasn't going to have any more Treasure Markets until next Spring but a number of her vendors convinced her to do an October expo and to have it the same weekend as the final Farmer's Market. The last Farmer Market of the year is held this Saturday and is in the Expo building at the fairgrounds.
Tammy booked another building on the fairgrounds for this Saturday. Everything was fine until Wednesday afternoon when the fair called and asked if Tammy would swap buildings. The gun show suddenly outgrew the grandstand building, and the building Tammy was booked into (the Trade Center) was larger than she needed as she would have used less than half of it. So Tammy swapped buildings to help the gun show and the fairground people.
Some of Tammy's vendors were very unhappy as they preferred the Trade Center building and they chewed Tammy out for being too nice and swapping buildings. The old Grandstand building has steps and is not handicap accessible. Since it has steps the vendors have to carry their wares into the building and can't wheel them inside. We had a bit of a scare in the morning when an older lady customer fell down the steps. She was ok but a little shaken up. I think everyone who saw her fall was more shaken up than the old lady herself.
But the nice thing is that the Grandstand building is right across from the Expo building where the Farmer's Market was located. People came out of one building and would walk over to the other building.
Both markets had lots of people. In the afternoon I walked through the Farmers Market. "Farmers" is a bit of a misnomer as I saw only a half dozen vendors selling food: squash, pumpkins, onions, potatoes, carrots and apples. The rest of the vendors, around 40(?), were selling mainly arts and craft stuff. I talked with one lady selling handcrafted oven hot pads and she said selling was slow.
I think most of the vendors at Tammy's market did well. Some vendors had a slow day as people looked but did not buy their stuff. Still, there were enough customers that most vendors weren't standing around talking to other vendors and watching the door for customers.
Most vendors set up their tables Friday between 4 pm and 8 pm so they would be ready by 9 am Saturday morning when the market started. Tammy included free use of one table as part of their spot. We got to the grandstand building a little before 3 pm and some vendors were already there. Tammy and I had to measure and mark the vendor locations and I had to set up a table and chair for each vendor.
We had an old map for the grandstand from when Tammy first rented the building another year and in that map she had a two foot space between each 10 foot vendor space. Tammy forgot this and after measuring the 10 foot vendor space on Friday we came up with more spaces than on the map. It doesn't look good to have empty spaces and Tammy had a full building with the 10/2 set up. So I had to remeasure the spaces.
I had a lot of tables to set up and take down when the market was over. Some vendors rented more tables. I think 60 tables ended up being used.
Tammy wanted balloons outside and on her signs. She bought a small helium tank and 30 balloons at Walmart. A vendor friend of hers said the balloons didn't last long and recommended we wait until Saturday morning to fill the balloons. So Saturday morning after I set out the signs she and I filled balloons. Meanwhile customers started to come. Lots of customers. We filled about 20 balloons and hung some outside near the building and then I placed two each on the signs to help draw attention to them.
As I said, I had brought garage sale items and set up three tables next to Tammy's Tastefully Simple table. I still had to price half the items on Saturday morning. A number of those items were Tammy's which made pricing harder. Tammy was running around managing the market so I had to keep an eye on her booth in addition to mine until things slowed down.
Crazy, crazy time.
A busy day overall and I maybe sat for a total of 15 minutes all day. Good thing the floor was a wooden floor and not concrete as my legs were tired enough from standing on wood. Concrete would have been worse.
I sold lots of stuff. I was surprised at the number of books I sold. Quite a number of 1970s science-fiction books. I didn't have enough room to put all of my books out on a table but when someone came along with a great interest in the books I would get the extra two boxes of books out from under the table for them to look over. Once time a woman laughingly told me I was the devil for tempting her with more books.
"Who? Me?"
The empty grandstand building.
In the afternoon when it slowed down and I had time to take a photo.
In Tammy's ads she asked people bring warm outer wear or blankets for donation to the local Evergreen clothes exchange at the church down the road. Look at all we got as donations. In the Spring Tammy collects donations for the local Food Bank; in the Fall, warm outer wear and blankets.
Some of the balloons near the building.
Here I collected the balloons after the market was over.
The ballloons at home. I plan to wait and see how long they float with the helium. They are already starting to sink and I think they will be on the ground by morning, 24 hours after we filled them.
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