June Update
At the beginning of 2021 I thought Sylva Spoon was going to be entirely online for another year. I spent a some time planning out the physical and digital work I wanted to do and I spent about five months putting that plan into action. Then on June 1st I got an email from the Street Vending Coordinator for the city of Madison. The downtown Farmers’ Market would be returning to the Square on June 19th.
Two weeks to completely shift from the entirely digital business to one that could be face-to-face again. The vaccine roll-out has been going well in Wisconsin, with almost 50% of the population fully vaccinated. I felt pretty good about emerging from my wood chip filled cave and relearning how to interact with members of the public again.
My digital plan was to spend a week each month carving as many iterations of one style of utensil I could. I was hoping to sell a few spoons throughout the year, but mainly building stock for a big Christmas push. Online classes were bringing in a regular income to help keep things afloat.
Things were going okay, but without real interactions with people I was getting pretty disillusioned with my work. The internet can feel like a vast black hole of content. Having to constantly produce videos, photos, blog posts, witty captions, emails and more just to remind people Sylva Spoon existed. It was hard work and I struggled to see the link between effort and reward.
But I had a plan and I was sticking to it. That helped keep me sane. Then came the aforementioned email. With just two weeks to get back into ‘market mode’ I had my work cut out for me. The biggest concern was the lack of range in my current stock. I had about 100 or so utensils, but across just 5 different designs. At the 2019 Farmers’ Market I had 12+ designs available. My main focus became widening my stock variety. I made ladles, coffee scoops, steam bent pie servers, cooking spoons, butter spreaders and serving spoons. I tried to get at least six of each done. But that wasn’t all.
Around the carving there was a bunch of market prep stuff to do. My wife helped me out by designing a vinyl banner for the stall and the labels for the spoon butter I spent half a day cooking up. I got a roof rack installed on our EV to help haul all my stuff to market and change (actual physical money) for folks unwilling to buy spoons with bitcoin. I also had to track down all the bits and pieces of my market set up that had slowly dispersed from where they had been originally put at the end of the 2019 market season.
New banner!
It was really great to have such a clear focus again. With the online work I didn’t (and still don’t) really know what works and what doesn’t. With the Farmers’ Market I turn up with my wares and sell them. I’m incredibly lucky to live in a city that has a Farmers’ Market with such high foot-traffic. So I just need to turn up. Sure, there’s a little more to it than just that, but selling face-to-face comes a little more easily to me than online marketing.
Day 1 of the 2021 Madison Farmers’ Market was fantastic. The weather was great. People were happy to be out and shopping locally. For me, sales were great, but the best part of the market was the positive reaction to my work from the public. That probably speaks more to my shallow, egotistical nature than I’m willing to explore right now. But having someone look you in the eye and tell you they like your work is so much more powerful than them tapping the ‘Like’ button on social media.
There was a funny downside to making a lot of sales. Feeling chronically understocked, I realized that I had to put in the work of replenishing all that sold stock! A fantastic problem to have, and another reminder of the weird way my mind works. Happy to have made a bunch of sales but concerned that all my stock is now gone. Back to the woodshed I guess!
Gotta make more wood chips to keep him comfy I guess 🤷♂️
Update
A downside of vending in person that I completely forgot about: bad weather! I ended up skipping the second weekend market due to thunderstorms being forecast. The upside was that I was able to catch up on a bunch of admin tasks I’d been putting off!
