Main x 24
Introduction (TL; DR!)
Since our official founding on November 23rd, 2024, we have been working indefatigably to pursue our Three Big Initiatives. When we learned that we could get a space at Main x 24 this year, we jumped on it as quick as we could! Here’s a quick overview of how we put it together, how it went, and what we learned.
How We Put It Together
We would not have been able to do anything at all without the generous support of our official sponsor, Tacoee. Tacoee is the Ocoee River’s first taco truck, and they’ve been providing the local area with fresh homemade salsa, tacos, ceviche (!!), and the best strawberry lemonade imaginable for a few years now. It’s off-season for them, and they’re expecting a baby in the next couple of days, so they lent us their EZ-Up Canopy and tables so that we could have a place to display our wares.
We also benefited from a gracious loan of display stands, bowls, and a tray from Chattanooga mountain biker, Alison Lucy. Alison has won multiple awards in women’s downhill mountain bike racing, and we feel lucky to know her.
Our stall sold art from six artists: a series of watercolor paintings by Delaine Ackerman, a couple more watercolors by Kat Bush, a selection of beautiful, handmade jewelry featuring found and tumbled rocks by Cat Vogel, more handmade jewelry and other small trinkets by Dana Arvidson, even more handmade jewelry and colorful, warm scarves by Tracy Miller, and some photography by the author of this writing.
How It Went
Our experience at Main x 24 was wonderful. We built some name recognition. We were blown away by the friendliness and help of neighboring vendors who stopped by to help us erect the EZ-Up canopy and checked in periodically to see how we were doing. We had great conversations with visitors and learned about more resources and contacts to build our network. Many local friends stopped by to say hello, give us words of support, and some even made purchases.
We sold nineteen items, and each artist had at least one sale. Sales and donations generated $300! Several of the payments went through the website, since that is currently our only card payment method. Venmo was down, likely due to all the cellular traffic at the event. Some of our sales were accompanied by additional donations that purchasers elected to add, which was a really nice surprise.
Our consignment agreement heavily favors the artists since our market concept was born out of a desire to help Asheville River Arts District Artists get paid to rebuild their portfolios that washed away during Hurricane Helene. However, many of our artists decided to turn their profits right over to WRN, not even taking their cut. This means that their time, labor, and materials were donated to help us and the organizations we support. Thank you, artists!
What We Learned
We have some needs and wishlist items for the next event:
A banner with our name and logo on it
Bags for people’s purchases
An outdoor rug to help invite people inside
Stickers with our logo
Business cards
Information about each artist and their work
A mirror so that people can see how the jewelry looks on them
Information about our sponsors
A trash bag or can (haha!)
A better way to display photographs and paintings upright
A Square/card reader
Overall, we had a tremendously positive experience and we look forward to doing another one. If we get many more artists involved, we may need to consider a second booth/stall situation.
We were truly blown away by all the support we had in putting this thing together, all the great visits and connections we made, and in how successful we were in making sales.
We’re putting money toward helping a couple of organizations on our Orgs We Admire list; in particular, we reached out to a couple of them to offer assistance in building websites and paying for their domain name purchases. At our next board meeting, we’ll decide which organization(s) we want to send a direct donation to.
The future is bright because we’re networking for mutual benefit. Thank you.
