Friday, October 9, 2009

Fall Fest Take 2...







You know when you see a car on the road with a dog sticking his head out the window, with his ears flapping in the wind, and the biggest dog smile on his face? That makes me happy. On a completely different note...

I participated in my second Church Fall Festival last weekend. What an ordeal and an operation....let me tell you. This time around I was determined to be more organized, more professional, more efficient, and basically more successful than last year...and I was. Last year I did fairly well for 6 hours of cookie selling with about $500 in sales...that's a lot of cookies. I way over baked though, and even though I had a steady stream of customers I had a lot of product leftover. The festival this year was a 2 day ordeal in a better location, with the promise of a huge turnout. Unfortunately the weather didn't feel like cooperating with me this year and it was overcast all day Saturday, and then monsooning all day Sunday...which means people stayed home where it was dry. Fortunately, the Church was so kind and found places inside for all of their outdoor vendors on Sunday. Still, the crowd wasn't very large because the bad weather. My motto going into this was "sell out or go home" - I was sure I would sell out this year. I started out with low sales, but then my wonderful family rallied and whipped out their mad crazy sales skills and boom-we were rocking it! Considering the size of the crowd we did really well with about $950 in sales, and less leftover product than last year. Go us! My favorite part about selling my stuff is the look on peoples faces when they bite into something, and then when they come back and buy more! Here are a few memorable things that happened...

1) My 5 year old niece jumped in and walked around with samples for people - it was so cute, and she got so many people to come buy stuff from us...her line was "Isn't it good? No I didn't make it, you can go buy some over there from my aunt." She had a blast...and I don't think I was breaking any child labor laws. : )

2) One older dude kept coming back to my tent - about 4 times to buy stuff...his comment about my heaven bars to another customer was, "I am old, and if I had died without getting the chance to eat this heaven bar, I never would have truly lived." : ) I almost cried : )

3) A middle aged lady came to my tent 6 times! Each time she brought someone new with her and got them to buy stuff from me as well! Talk about a dedicated customer!

4) My younger sisters and one of their friends helped me out so much - two of them were my support throughout the three day ordeal helping me set up and tear down, another one jumped in mid day and really upped my sales...she is a wicked good salesperson even though she doesn't think she is. My mom was my baker and on Friday she baked all my cookies off for me, 9-7 baby! My older sister and her husband made me beautiful business cards that are hip, and cool, and awesome...very awesome!

5) At the end of the day my neighboring vendor had already bought two bags of cookies from me and offered to trade me 3 pairs of earrings for another bag...boo yah baby, and free earrings for me!

Overall, I had a good time, and I realized 3 things.

1) If you offer something different then your regular run of the mill chocolate chip cookie - people will be interested...if it is good, they will buy it, and then come back for more!

2) I really can't do this alone and definitely need a business partner who is better at numbers than I am.

3) I really am good at what I do, and I love making people happy with just one bite. : )

the end.



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