VivoCity Craft Market 31st Mar/1st April 2012 Post-Mortem

Folks,

Hubs asked me why I wasn't so enthusiastic about my craft market at VivoCity over the weekend. I realised that once I stop going out to sell for too long, I get the jitters and probably that's why I did not show much enthusiasm. Thing is, you stay home, you make your stuff and then on 2 days, you get your validation. Or not.


It can be a painful process. Sometimes you think you've made something really special and no one likes it. It hurts. It does.


Well, my weekend craft market at VivoCity was not too bad. I mean I set my expectations very, very low. And I expected the worst. I usually do the opposite.


One of the ongoing issues I face selling at VivoCity is the allocation of my counter. At Red Dot Design Museum where I used to sell, the system is very simple. The early bird gets the pick. You find the location you like best and you get that table. Here at VivoCity, it's allocated to you by the organizers. It means you're pretty much at their mercy. In February I had the Table of Death. This round, I did not get the Table of Death. What did I get?


To explain that, I have to help you visualize how the counters are spread out at VivoCity. There's the main large area where most of the counters and the cashier are located. A short distance away along a walkway are 4 counters, side by side. Let's call this area China. (no offence to my Chinese readers!) Further down the walkway, no, not yet, keep walking, yep, some more, more, don't stop, and a bit more..... there's another location where around 4 counters are located. Let's call this area Siberia. (again no offence to my Siberian readers!)

So I got China this round. Not the coastal part of China. I got Inner Mongolia. (again no offence to my Mongolian readers)

Perhaps this image will help you out. I am the second counter from the left. To my right there are 2 more counters. I had a rack but I could not use it much as it's behind my counter. As you can see, the gaps between the counters are really tiny. I couldn't squeeze my way through without dislodging the display. The only way out for me was to make a big round, past the counter to my left. This was perhaps the only irritating issue I had.

This is my table display on Saturday.

On Sunday I changed things up a little. I had a little difficulty displaying my brooches. I simply lay them flat on the table. I think I will have to look into a better way to display them without taking up so much table surface.

My sales overall was better in China than at Table of Death. It was okay. Not great. Not bad. Let's say, satisfactory. I think a lot of sellers would love to have a counter in the walkway where I was. You get a lot of traffic. Sadly, most just want to have a look but the traffic is there.

For me, the issue with being in a walkway is the noise. If you understand deafness, you'll know that a lot of background noise makes it hard for someone like me who only hears with one ear. I really found it hard to hear what the customers were saying. Normally, I would not have any problems as I could just move closer to the customer but as I've explained, I could not come out easily. I have lived with my deafness for many years and I consider myself a hearing person even. But over the weekend, it was the first time I felt it was a handicap. Next round, I'll definitely do something about it.

The 4 brooches that sold!

 Know what I was most happy about? I sold a total of 4 brooches. Since I made brooches here and here, I had been curious to see the response. I'm happy to report the brooches got a lot of attention.

I met a lovely lady, Barbara who bought 2 items from me! And she's wearing one of them. We had a nice chat and she really made me very happy with all the nice things she said about my stuff. Thank you ♥ and she gamely posed for me. I hope to see you again Barbara!

Hubs came to keep me company on Sunday. How nice of him!

My sis, Elaine came to visit too. She gave me this bunch of embroidery thread. How generous of her! And the thread came just when I was thinking of buying more as I'm using up my thread like toilet paper. Oh and Janet came too. Both these ladies have been giving me such great support.

And my friend, Corinna lent me this embroidery book. It's in German but it's okay. I just look at the pictures. She sells really adorable dolls and stuff. Check her out at Cute and Cosy.

And that's my post-mortem. I won't be back at VivoCity Craft Market until May.

Now for my daily tracking..........

Sewing projects

I completed 2 embroidered birds for more brooches. Then I fell asleep with the needle in my hand. I woke up with a horrid headache. I can't tell what's worse. Waking up with a needle in your hand or a headache. I think sleeping in the afternoon gives me a headache so I shall take my naps in the morning from now on!

Fitness

Zero progress. There was a major thunderstorm in the morning. That's my excuse.

ePatterns

I forgot I own ePatterns. Will do better tomorrow. I was really tired today.

Diet

I had 1 cup of coffee and I cup of sweet tea the whole day. So proud of myself. You know what I do now when I crave more tea? I drink a fruit tea (no sugar) and later tonight I'm trying green tea. Hope it doesn't taste as bad as it looks.

For lunch, we had a fancy meal - Teppanyaki. A new stall had opened at the food court near where we live and hubs wanted to try it. Of course it was expensive. My prawns meal cost $9.90 and drinks aren't included.

Here's the cook. I felt he did not work hard enough at showing off.

Here's the prawns and vege.

Then the cook killed it with a giant heaps worth of bean sprouts. You know, no one can eat that much bean sprouts. Teppanyaki is very oily and full of salt. So I count this meal as unhealthy.

To make up for it, my dinner was vegetarian, cooked by me - baby carrots, Japanese cucumbers, white mushrooms and french beans. My meat was an egg and of course a small amount of rice.

Time Wasters

I spent far too much time this morning trying to install a widget on my blog to display a facebook share button. Can you believe that after all that time invested, it didn't even work!

I want to do better tomorrow. See ya.