No Storefront for Me :-(

The craft fair/store I was planning to participate in this holiday season is a no-go.

The woman who was putting it together is a good friend. She's also my officemate at the dayjob 3 days a week, so I got to watch the whole process from idea -- I had no clue how much is involved in renting a retail space, from utility negotiations to insurance & accessibility concerns--to finished plan. This week I saw it fall apart when the landlord decided to turn down 3 months of guaranteed rent for the chance to get a longer term lease in the space (which has been vacant for quite some time...) She had a couple back-up locations, but they all fell through.

I feel really bad for her; I ~know~ exactly how many hours she devoted to making this happen plus the hours of time she spent building product for her own booth. And, *poof* it's gone.

I have a confession, too.

While I am NOT and NEVER WILL BE glad her business venture was crushed, I am a little relieved.

I'm slow. I figure somewhere between an artist and an enthusiast when I craft -- I like to make beautiful things, but they have to be beautiful to me; I don't really care what others think, and I don't like to make the same thing more than once, for the most part. Which meant that building inventory for my little corner/shelf in her store was stressing me out. Alot. I thought I was doing well (I was still making the last three weeks I haven't been updating) building supply.

I saw a formula somewhere indicating that your inventory during the holiday season should be roughly 3x what you hope to sell (dunno where the hell the math for that came from).

I was planning to rent a 1' x 4' wall shelf for my stuff, nothing big. Last weekend I bought a big wheeled 45gal plastic tote to store the stuff I was making for the holiday store.

Spatial awareness is not my forte. The tub was too big to fit in the trunk of my VW. I got it in the backseat, just, but it took some doing. Will fit fine if I put the backseat down, but still. Yea.

Lugged the box up the stairs to my office/craft room/disastrous pit/home of all lost objects ever and loaded it up with my inventory. Which is to say I was unable to cover even the bottom of this 4'x2'x2.5' tub. Well, I might have, if I unstacked the scarves... But you see what I mean. What started as an enthusiastic purchase to help me get organized for the craft bazaar quickly turned into a graphic visual reminder of how impossible this was in the midst of everything else I do.

So while the news of the bazaar's cancellation was unexpected and disappointing, it was also a bit of a relief.

On the other hand, now I'm wondering what the heck to do with all these scarves and wine charm sets!