February and March 2021 saw a lot of things happening to my home-based business. Probably the most significant of which took place early in February. After we moved from the Yellow Room a year ago into the Main Building at 6005 Station Street, Oliver (in the Oliver Indoor Flea Market) we were at the COVID-friendly front door. It was great to be one of the first vendors customers would see the moment they stepped inside the building. However, what constantly concerned me was the heat. Let me explain: I am not very heat tolerant and nor are the jarred items I sell as part of our JamBusters! business. The wall we were next to gets the sun all day so it heats up and the heaters above that hang down from the ceiling cross overtop of our products. I spent a lot of time and effort covering our display with a canopy, deflectors, and running fans to keep the product cool.

While it worked, for the most part, I just found the heat wore me out by the end of the day to the point where I was not looking forward to vending there anymore. So, on Tuesday, February 9 I went to Oliver and with Mel and Gary helping, I moved our booth to a location in the centre of the building facing the Northside. I still had a corner with two sides of frontage, as we had at the COVID-friendly main entrance, but without heaters above or a wall behind that was heating up daily from the sun. Sales figures were seriously impacted by the move and on Sunday, March 7 I spun our booth 45-degrees to where the JamBusters! products were along the main aisle that runs South to North in the building. That improved the sales figures almost instantly. Weather and George’s health also impacted our vending dates. We closed on Sunday, February 7, and I stayed home Saturday, February 20 (Mel ran things for us).

The Numbers From The Two Months

Well, as I indicated, February and March were very different months compared to what we’ve been accustomed to seeing at the Oliver Indoor Flea Market. There were a total of 8 vending dates in both months. We missed one in February due to the weather. Our slowest sales day in February was Saturday, February 27 where we sold ZERO jars. That is a first for us in the seven-plus years we have been selling JamBusters! products. Our best day in the month was Saturday, February 6 when we sold 9 jars. The total jar count for February 2021 was 25. That is also a record low for us since we started weekly vending. March 2021 was better. Our slowest day was Sunday, March 7 with 2 jars sold and our best day was Sunday, March 21 with 21 jars sold. The total jar count for March was 72. Still down from our average of 100 jars a month, but much better than February’s numbers.

Other Things Of Note

I mentioned that George’s health was once again a factor. On Tuesday, February 16 he got sick and I ended up taking him to the local ER that evening. He spent the night and blood tests revealed that his sodium levels were too low. We’ve been keeping an eye on his sodium to help his heart regain strength and must have gone too far. Fortunately, that was an easy fix. I stayed home the Saturday after he got out of the hospital and he convinced me to go and vend on Sunday, which I did. By the following weekend, George felt well enough to join me at the market on Sunday, February 28. He also made the trip three times during March. Speaking of March, early in the month we received an order of face masks George ordered that have the JamBusters! logo on them. We haven’t quite figured out what to do with them but they are one of the most comfortable masks I’ve worn so far during COVID.

It Was My Birthday

March is my birthday month and it fell on a Friday this year. George took me out for brunch at a local coffee shop we used to frequent almost weekly pre-COVID. Then for supper that evening he picked up take-out from a local restaurant we used to go to for lunch every so often pre-COVID. What I wasn’t expecting was that while I was enjoying brunch on my birthday, Mel and the crew were at our booth in the Oliver Indoor Flea Market dressing it up for my birthday that we were going to celebrate the following day on a vending day. It was a fun couple of birthday days for me.

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I started the New Year with a lot of extra space in my booth at the Oliver Indoor Flea Market. Over the Christmas break, I added the additional room behind our booth to give us a lot more storage space and to allow for additional display space. It was on December 28, 2020, when both George and I went to Oliver to start working on the new layout. I tweaked it several more times during January. My goal is to start taking things from home and offering them for sale as a means of downsizing a little. The idea I have is to make the newly expanded part of our booth into a mini shop with several items for sale displayed on shelving. I’ll probably be working on defining and redefining this one for a while. Luckily, George and Mel helped me on different days during the month.

New Products

Well, since it is a New Year, I thought I would make use of some of the produce I have stored in one of our freezers and start adding new products to the JamBusters! inventory. I used the quince we picked in Oliver late last year for a couple of new things. I added Quince Chutney and Quince Preserves to our offerings. As George pointed out when I was going through recipes, “You can’t go wrong with anything chutney.” I also did up some new Haskap jam. I had Haskap Beast Berry Jam in the inventory last year and it finally sold out so I replaced it with Haskap Beauty Berry Jam. In case you’re wondering, the berry varieties of the Haskaps are called “Beauty” and “Beast” so I didn’t make up the names of our products. I actually used the berry names for them. I added an old product with a slight twist - Cherry Cherry Chocolate Preserves. We’ve had this one before but the recipe got altered slightly this time around. What makes this an interesting product is that it contains cherry liqueur. And one final item in our dried soups section I added this month is a Three Bean Chili Mix. I’ll be adding more dry soup mixes as they have started to gain traction this season.

The New Year Numbers

January is usually one of those odd months for us. Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it is not. This year, it was fairly steady. The calendar month of January 2021 had us vending a total of ten days, so the numbers will be related to a five-week sales cycle. Total jars sold for the month was 82. Our best day of sales was Saturday, January 9, 2021, with 15 jars sold. Our slowest day of the month was a tie between two Sundays (January 10 and January 24) with just 2 jars sold. Just four of the ten days saw us sell into the double digits. As for Watkins sales, there was one day with no sales at all but the rest of the month was good. Three of the ten market days saw Watkins outsell JamBusters! with a couple more dates where Watkins nearly matched JamBusters! figures. In total, a solid month for us regardless.

Other Things

George only came out to help me twice during the month. He has been busy with his freelance writing business and has scheduled his work weeks into the weekends so he can space out some of his bigger jobs. Plus, the last couple of times he spent a Sunday with me at the market wore him out. January 2021 is also the time for renewals. During the month we renewed our annual Vendor Insurance policy. Upcoming renewals will include our membership in the Princeton & District Chamber of Commerce and our Town of Princeton Business License. We haven’t put much thought into advertising for JamBusters! or Watkins this year as we have no idea what the summer vacation season is going to look like with COVID-19 still a concern. The Oliver Indoor Flea Market continues to have mandatory mask-wearing, hand sanitizing stations, and social distancing protocols. We also wear masks inside our booth and hand sanitize with our own sanitizer frequently. Neither George nor I expect a change in these guidelines throughout the majority of 2021.

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We have a fairly active Facebook page. You can find it HERE. Plus, if you are a fan of our products, please let us know. You can find our Google My Business page HERE. As for what 2021 will bring, our outlook of this New Year is to just wait and see what happens. Whatever it happens to be, we will be able to adapt to it and continue doing what we have been doing with the home-based business that we started in 2014.