To say we were excited to be vendors here would have been an understatement.
The Saturday hours for this massive indoor flea market are 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. We had arranged to arrive, with one other Princeton vendor – a friend of mine, Diana, who knits, crochets and makes some funky dog treats – in time to start serving customers at ‘9ish’ since we still had about a 90-minute drive to get to the venue.
The venue is a former manufacturing site that was used to build some kind of large recreational vehicles. It is actually one large building with three additional commercial/retail buildings connected together with what I would guess at hosting about 50 different vendors. Some are ‘permanent’ vendors and some are seasonal or short-term. The market is open all year just on weekends with reduced hours on Sundays.
George and I have usually been here on a Sunday and since we closed our newspaper office last July we have made the trip the odd Saturday. We have been there so many times that several of the permanent vendors recognize us and so we thought this could be a good fit for our JamBusters! brand.
We pulled up to the side door we had our table located near at 9:15 AM. We were completely unloaded, set up and serving samples by 9:45 AM. Some of the vendors who recognized us were happy to see us and several tried products and purchased some of them. In fact, fellow vendors were not only supporting our product with purchases, they were encouraging and we felt extremely welcome.
George explained it later as us having a familiarity with the layout and general vibe of the venue that contributed to how it made us feel being there. We even bumped into some former Princeton residents there. The day was awesome for us as we met so many new people who were intrigued by the ‘try-before-you-buy’ way we market my products. It was fun watching George give his pitch to those who showed even a slight interest.
I ended up collecting phone numbers and making connections with customers wishing to have access to our products on days when we are not on location. It made me think that we probably need to factor the Oliver Indoor Flea Market into our regular vending schedule monthly during the summer, if we can. We will most certainly add it to our ‘off season’ schedule for 2017. Plus, we were approached to participate in another one-time indoor event in Oliver for next month!
We may have found an alternative site to explore later this year and we are happy that it is place we already know as customers. As for the actual sales for the day, they were not bad. At the very least they were encouraging enough for us to take a serious look at fitting more one day vending stops here in the future. JamBusters! clearly left a good impression and from the feedback we received they won’t have any trouble finding us room the next time we vend there!