Back in March 2023, we participated in our largest event yet, as a vendor at the Philadelphia Flower Show and what an experience it was. Up until this point, our experience has been single day craft fairs. This was a 10 day commitment with 14-16hr days when you factored in travel.
Why did we make such a big leap? There is a quote that always sticks with me whenever something terrifies me and that is, "Always do what you're afraid to do." I also had heard someone the year prior talking about the flower show and how it was outside, but when I saw it was coming back to the convention center, I thought that it might bring a larger crowd and that was definitely a good thought because there were a lot of people that crossed our path over those ten days.
Leading up to the event we only had about a month to prepare, which I would not recommend. Between my mom (Gram), Derek and I and lots of help from our family, we spent many late nights prepping for the event. We had to make all new displays because we knew the displays we were working with for the one-day fairs would not cut it for this type of event and the customer we wanted to attract.
Between our other jobs and having a four year old we split the week. My mom and Derek's mom came with one of us each of the days, which was extremely helpful. The weekend's proved to the most profitable, but we were also surprised by some of the days during the week too.
The hardest challenge for us was knowing how much product we needed to make and I found myself making more and more hats and sweatshirts each night. Another lesson we learned the hard way was to not have any blind spots because people will steal your stuff. The first day someone had stolen a hat and we realized we could not see the one side of our display and there were a lot of people passing this area. That night Derek made up a quick piece to install on the side, so that we did not have to worry about that being an issue for the rest of the time.
Would we do it again? Absolutely! Everyone was extremely nice and we met vendors that we still keep in touch with to this day. Unfortunately, you won't see us at the 2024 show because we will have a brand new bundle of joy that will be taking all of our focus, but hopefully we will be back in full swing for 2025.
I find that hardest hurdle to get over is knowing what to expect at events like this and I want to document that over the years as we continue to try new things. That way if someone reading this is thinking about doing something like this, hopefully this helps, but they can also feel comfortable reaching out with any questions.
-Christie