We received this email from Carol yesterday. And with her permission, the choice is to publish today. Thank you Carol for your kind words and continued support. The Community thrives because of your input, advise and years of show experience. It is so gratifying to see Community Members uniting and supporting their shows.
The Community Carol Wallace – Show Comment:
First of all, I must apologise for taking so long to write this, but I needed a few days to get my head around what I wanted to say.
I want to say “BLOODY WELL DONE!”
All your hard work shone through this lovely show, with so many community members coming together, with some new faces and stalls,
Yes: for us it was quiet both mornings but hectic both afternoons, for others it was the other way around, which to me says visitors did the show in “sections” but stayed all day. Some were busy all day, which is lovely and yes, sadly some members were quiet both days. You know what? That’s the gamble of not just a “show” but any business!
Some days can be a real flyer of a day another can find you twiddling your thumbs, well in my case making my wire wrap pendants ..lol or in this case enjoying the gifts of quiet mornings to have much needed treatments with fellow members .. keeping them busy 😉 and taking care of ourselves which we don’t always do. We got a chance to speak to our neighbours and learn more about them and share some of our journey with them which was beautiful and we had such a laugh.
As we always say for us, a show is a great chance to meet folks, advertise ourselves and catch up with people. Yes, we need to cover costs, but that isn’t the main or rather only reason for doing the shows. We choose to look at the “bigger picture” .. the knock-on from the show .. the long term outlook for Crystal Carols .. not just the takings from one show! We have had 22 new likes on our facebook page after this show and three phone orders and five requests for workshop dates after my talks! So, it is ALL about the bigger picture!
We had two ladies come from London to the show as to travel to the shop is just too far for them, we first met them at Lincoln Show a few years ago. We had a lovely couple who “stumbled” across their first-ever Well Being Show at Newstead two weeks before, and came to Newark with a shopping list of items! And enjoyed their day at both events ! this couple is now planning on coming to Nottingham event to do their Christmas shopping!
So, at this September event, the “numbers ” were slightly down … but I am sure we have ALL done shows where we are down on numbers. Indeed, I have heard of a few “nightmare” shows this year with other organisers. I heard about one show where there were only 30 folks through the door ALL weekend!
That was simply due to lack of advertising which is not something that can be said about LIZIAN EVENTS! But as community members, we also have to work together to promote and advertise the shows; this should be teamwork, not just left to the organisers to do!
Yes! I have heard about shows that were heaving, but no one or rather very few folks spend, this is life, this happens.
Yes we can TRY to figure out why some shows are a flyer and others aren’t there are many many factors to this, such as weather, too lovely they may not come out, too wet they may not come out ?? .but I have got to say I don’t totally agree with this .. one of our best shows had 4″ of snow on the ground !!
But I KNOW I would rather have 400 folks in a show having a wonderful time enjoying their day interested in what we do rather than 1000 people who are just “getting out of the rain”
So to finish, I would like to say THANK YOU, and we are looking forward to the new venue in Nottingham!
See you soon folks.
Lots of love.
Carol and Campbell xxx
