Eliminating Travels

There weren't too many vendors that traveled very far to the Hayward Zucchini Festival and I don't blame them.

And we are joining the crowd by eliminating distant shows in order to maximize profits and minimize expenses. We will not be doing the Morro Bay Harbor Festival in early October and Clovisfest in late September. For many years, we have been participating in these events. We have really enjoyed our trips to Morro Bay while spending the weekend there in a Motel. We always went over to Giovanni's along the wharf area and had some of their fish and chips...actually I always got the Halibut and Chips, which were the best I have ever eaten.

There's quite a bit of overhead involved in doing the Harbor Festival...$350 for a booth space, $160 for a motel (2 nights) and another $100 for gas. So, that's over $600 right off the bat. Shows have been slow and vendors are not guaranteed making great sums of money at any show and we realize that our net profit for this event would be quite low. We decided to forgo the Festival and do a local Flea Market on Saturday. Never thought I'd be doing Flea Markets, but have to cut costs somehow and it looks like the net profit from one day would be close to what would be made at the Festival. Same for Clovisfest, which is also an expensive show to do and I wouldn't expect to make a lot of money there....and the same would be for a huge majority of vendors. So, we will do the DeAnza College Flea Market the first Saturday of October and the Chabot College Flea Market on the third Saturday of September.

Also, in order to cut travel costs, we are combining a number of shows in January and February into one 5-week trip, doing events in Yuma, Tyson Wells and Kernville. We have also phased out the Lake Havasu Winterfest, which is in early February .and have found that people there were just not spending money...just out for a stroll. It was a nice event for us, but like so many vendors are doing, we need to cut back on our traveling road shows!!!

In most of the shows/events, we will probably see perhaps 20-30 percent fewer booths, which were probably filled in the past by out of town vendors. If the economy continues and the wrong person becomes president, we can see things getting really bad, etc.

Reviews of July and August Events

We are providing reviews of our events during the months of July and August, 2008 in our Starving Vendors website.
Hayward Zucchini Festival, Hayward, CA ... They let the music play until 7:30 PM and SOME YEARS it goes longer than that. Come on now.... it's dangerous for us to load up when it gets dark because THERE ARE NO LIGHTS AND DIFFICULT TO SEE. I guess they are waiting for somebody to get run over?
Douglas County Fair, Roseburg, OR... The setting sun brought out large crowds, but mostly kids. There's a concert about 40 yards from us and IT IS LOUD. Earlier this evening we had a pig run into the booth. Unbelievable. The music continued all night long and we could not hear our customers
Deschutes County Fair, Redmond, OR... was another slow day and worse than Wednesday. Alice Cooper did a 2-hour performance and afterwards, most of the crowd made a beeline for the gate. The carnival has been hopping and that's where a lot of the crowd goes. Coos County Fair, Myrtle Point, OR... Last day of the fair. Better crowd late morning, but this is Saturday and should be the busiest day. A bit slow mid-afternoon. Weather is great. Slight breeze.
Winchester Bay (OR) Oceanfest... It was pretty much dead on Friday morning and people didn't start showing up until noon time. Seemed like mostly tourists and they weren't buying much. Lots of kids with the 'itchy finger syndrome.' It was sunny most of the day with arriving and departing clouds. Winds picked up closer to noontime and increased in velocity throughout the day and kept up well into the night. Our canopy stayed intact, but the wind was whipping the top cover up, down, left, right, etc.
Mt. Shasta 4th of July ... They really came out on Friday and the place was alive and buzzing. People were buying.... I was located over in the Castle Street area and that part is a 3-day show. On Saturday, booths are set up for a two-day show on the main street. This is to allow various events to occur on Friday... a run/walk with a lot of participants and a long parade. Very enjoyable