Farmer's Market Run Down

Last Friday SCB did his second run at the local farmer's market and we are proud to say he did better than last month.... but boy were we worried.

The weather wouldn't cooperate and stayed grey and uninviting so business was really slow in the beginning. It took 30 minuets into the market for him to sell a single item... one bottle opener (which went for $15 since we knocked the price down $5 since none sold last month).

Then it took almost 2 and a half hours down the line for more action to start happening. This worried us because last month all the action happened the first few hours and he didn't sell anything after 11:45am... but thankfully this was just the opposite! In the last hour and 15 minutes he sold:

4 pens to one lady...

Then 2 bottle stopper corkscrew sets....

then another pen....

and another...

then 3 more pens before closing up shop

None of the matching letter opener/pen sets sold, despite dropping the price down $5 to $30 for the set... and our $5 "support the artist" key chains didn't move either, but those don't cost us much since we use the blanks from broken pens so it only costs us the small kit. 

But i'm very grateful that he ended up selling 10 pens, one bottle opener, and 2 of the corkscrew bottle stoppers for a total of $195.00 before any fees.

Most people paid in cash this time too which was very different from the first market with only one person paying cash.

After the $20 stall fee and the $2.66 in credit card fees, we walked away with $172.34 for the day (not including the $14.63 we collected in sales tax that i'll remit to the state at the end of the month).

Unfortunately not all the money we earned will be able to be re-invested in SCB's business. We noticed the day before that our petty cash box didn't have the correct amount of money in it to start the sales day. It took a few minutes for us to figure out what happened to it, but we had taken some money out of it after the market last month to get change and forgot to put it back in there.... so it just stayed in SCB's wallet and we just assumed it was pocket money and whittled it away here and there over the course of last month/this month.... so we used some of the profits to "fix the till" after our showing.

But just like with last time, we will be re-investing the money on more inventory... and we are sticking just to pens since they sell more then anything else and are the least costly item to make. It's our hope that we might be able to get a spot in the holiday boutique around Christmas time and really do some great selling because they get a few 1,000 people to come out to it every year... only problem is that the stalls are $90 a pop and we would need a few hundred pens because you need to have inventory to cover both days.... which would mean some serious investing in the company... like dropping a grand on supplies. It's not out of the question, but we are taking it slow and using the farmer's market as a test site for what sells and doesn't sell.

Also, since we are hands down their easiest drama free vendor, the gal who runs the market said she would try and squeeze us in next month is someone cancels last minute or if they re-configure the set up so they can fit more vendors... So who knows, we might be back in a month to sell again! :)

So, since we sold 10 pens, we ordered enough supplies to make 20 more pens from our two main suppliers and SCB will get to work for our August showing if not one for July.

I'm hoping by the end of the year that we will be able to break even on the business and possibly start pulling money out once we have a sizable inventory all geared up and ready to go.