We was invited to attend our first ever music festival as traders the answer was always going to be a big Yes.
We was so grateful to foxy markets for the invitation to be apart of a group of creative artisan traders.
Lets Talk About the Festival
We Out Here, the festival stages across the August bank holiday weekend in leafy Cambridgeshire, Taking its name from a 2018 Brownswood compilation showcasing London’s fertile jazz scene, the festival sits somewhere between a specialist affair and a more mainstream event, its lineup boasting acts as disparate as jazz legend Pharaoh Sanders, superstar rave duo Overmono, south London rapper Enny, and footwork selector Sherelle.
Now in its third year, We Out Here jolts to life on a grey Thursday, revellers in cowboy hats and waterproof jackets perusing non-musical attractions like the on-site record store, skating at the roller rink and testing their abdominal strength during a limbo session at the Lemon Lounge. Plus not to mention The Foxy market, a creative selection of fashion and lifestyle goods.
We Seized the opportunity. We Just had too.
From our point of view as a company..any small business attending a festival should treat this as an opportunity to meet people and introduce your products to a wider audience. For Goodstart Jones we are always in our workshop creating orders and creating new products, designing and developing new ideas.
However despite our creative innovations, we never ever seem to get the opportunity nor time to introduce the business or showcase what we do to a people since we hardly use Instagram with non-existent on social media ever since being hacked.
So been invited to take part in a festival we jumped at the chance “ Big thank you Foxy market collective for the invite” overall experience with the we out here Festival was awesome would definitely do it again the experience was priceless. Overall for any business wanting to get their products to new customers is worth it.
In-fact the feedback alone was so informative from people we used it to help us develop a brand new tote bag that called the “Good-Day Tote Bag”. We chosen that name because we guarantee you’ll certainly have a good day when using it. After all, to be able to carry everything without issues is a good day in our books.
Oh yes, back to my point. This was the first time attending a summer music festival EVER. Something we’ve always wanted to do as a business.
Taking part as traders turn out to be a fantastic experience. We certainly sold plenty of custom tote bags and accessories . But the highlight and big win for us was getting to know what people actually thought of our bags and the brand from friendly conversations and jovial banter.
Think the evening when we should the shop it was able to experience their festival itself we felt it was great and we like music we like jazz Being big hiphop heads we enjoyed the sets by General lvi and Underground residence to name a few. Plus the non-musical festivities too. Another highlight was recognize a few customers with some of our bags during the evenings which was always pleasing.
Overall to conclude the best thing that made the festival worth wild and really pop was the people…
Not just the customers but everyone in attendance including the other traders staff and attendees. Everyone had a great mindset which made it the feel quiet the celebration whilst being chilled and relaxing at the same time.
For example we hardly get to meet people we sell too. Yes Indeed we relish the feedback from online sales platforms plus the emails that we receive each week
has been vital for innovation.
However talking to new people face-to-face is like a treat to us as it's a different feeling when you get the condition or you get compliments.
Witnessing various people browse through the bags on the rails and talk about the bags that was really gratifying. We put in so much work creating the bags, so to see the product get discovered and chosen by a new proud owner gives us a warm feeling of accomplishment. As sense of pride to see our bags valued by over customers made our attendance worth it.
For our first festival we learnt a lot as a brand and what certain customers want from us. For example, we learnt that most people like bright bold colors like ice greens orange and yellows purples. we out sold these colors more than the darker ones. Yet camouflage print was our big seller. the camo bags combined with the other colors was a thing we tried as a sample selection that we might add to our line up.
When you go to a festival bring bigger tote bags. These Large Totes was another product we sold a lot of. Furthermore we learnt that not a lot of people like patterns for the logos that we chose so will probably do less patterned bags unless we work with a collaboration of artists instead will do more bold colors and brighter however we did learn that a lot of people wanted zips however zips is something we don't really want to use in our own range of products unless really needed because they're not a sustainable hardware and cant guaranty failure .Therefore zippers goes against our principle when about aiming to become a sustainable company.
Yet it's not all doom and gloom because the bags that we do create without that we on the on the right track and like I said before we did learn a lot from the experience.
We Made Bags Fresh Daily…
Because we brought a sewing machine vinyl printer and heat press, we set up a makeshift mini workshop in our airbnb house which enabled us to produce various bags that we believed would work for the festival over the 4 day period.
This strategy allowed us to replenish stock and make the type of bags appropriate for the festival and what people were looking for.
talking to attendees find out what they liked, what customers wanted simply to go back to our airbnb hotel and create the type of bags that we knew would sell which saved us a lot of money and waste and time trying to convince people to buy bags that they wouldn't be interested .
making of daily it felt like there's a bunch of bakers because will make bags fresh in the morning and then sell it the same day at the event was awesome.
I'll tell anybody that is thinking of to attend a festival as a trader “go ahead and go for it go for it”! With all your mind and heart you will be pleased you did it.
