We had a great time in Longmont, Colorado this weekend showing Authentic. Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth to say hi- it is nice to meet people in real life who actually read this blog!
My sister and I decided that we both didn't need to be there both days, so Susan went on Friday and I got Saturday. Big mistake. Huge. For me anyway. Anyone who has ever worked either a trade or consumer show knows that there is nothing worse than being at a show when nobody comes to your booth. Here's what happened:
On Friday (the first day of the show), I was at home (about 2 hours away from Longmont) wondering how things were going. So I started calling Susan's cell phone at about 9 a.m., and kept trying all day. Finally, she called back at 4 p.m. to say she hadn't been out of the booth and this is the first time she had a chance to go to the bathroom. She said there were tons of people, we needed a bigger booth and they had already sold out of some bolts of fabric. A good day to work the booth- in fact a perfect day to work the booth. Lots of sales and not a moment of boredom. Who cares if you didn't get to eat lunch!
So- Saturday as I was driving to Longmont, I was so excited to go to the show. Mom and Susan seemed to have a lot of fun of Friday, so I assumed my day would be the same. Wrong. Well, for a while anyway. At 9 a.m., I expected to see a line of women waiting for the doors to open, just like they did the day before. Only problem is, every quilter in the state of Colorado must have decided that this was a great day to sleep in. Nobody in the booth. Nobody. After what may have been the busiest show day we ever had. Nobody.
Which leads to the many activities we have come up with through the years to relieve "Booth Boredom". These range from playing hangman, to designing new products on scrap paper to trying to write down all the states in alphabetical order. Ten o'clock, still nobody and me still feeling ridiculously sorry for myself. I wanted to have fun, too. I just kept thinking, next year Friday is mine!
But, wait………….11:05 and here they come! All of the sudden, I was blessed with customers. Lots of customers. Which made me feel really badly about my jealous and negative thoughts I had about my bad choice of days. I'm sorry, all you Saturday show-goers. I will never doubt you again.
At about 11:15, I was busy cutting fabric, answering questions and trying to check out three customers at once when I heard a familiar voice. I turned around and on the outside of our booth, behind all the women, I caught a glimpse of Susan. She smiled and said, "I knew you guys would need help". She was right- we did need help and I was sure glad to see her. She never believed me about the two hours of no activity. But if she would have gotten there just 15 minutes earlier, she would have been real sad she drove 80 miles to surprise us with her presence.
I did get a few pictures of the show- here is Susan laughing about her inablility to count back change correctly. To be fair, I'm not good at that either. Strange. We are both over 30, both college graduates and both have to count 9 + 5 on our fingers. Every time.
Susan brought her daughter, Jordan, who just happens to be my favorite 9 year old in the world. By the way, she never has to use her fingers to count.
For this picture, I must thank all of you who bought the Authentic fabric. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We were pretty excited that we went home with empty fabric bolts.
Thanks again to all of you who stopped by our booth. We loved meeting everyone and hope you enjoy Authentic as much as we do! See you next year.
p.s. I'm still going on Friday next time!
-posted by Lisa