I'm not a Happy Camper

We did our second Tuesday farmers' market and it really sucked. Made very little money, few people showed up to buy things (I guess lack of customers can lead to lack of sales). Took home way too much lettuce and spring mix.

I am thinking that the governing board of the OFMU, which now controls this market, is not paying much attention to it. Instead they have put everything into the Saturday market. Granted, the Saturday market is a lot bigger but if they continue to ignore the Tuesday market it will likely die in a year or two. I know if we do not start doing better in the next 4 weeks we will have to stop coming. We cannot continue to go to a market where we make well under $100 (we really need to make around $250 each week at this market and in the past we did).

I swear this market did better for us when I was in charge of it (last year I was able to hand over the reins to the OFMU Market manager after running it for the past 5 or so years. But I was still on the OFMU board so I was able to get support for this market) and basically did nothing but get permits from the City of Oxford and send out an email to my customers most weeks reminding them of the market and of course show up every week for the past 11 years.

Last year we made $115 more than we made this year on the same week. Granted, we did have strawberries (which sell themselves and have been quite successful for us) but I can see from the records we also had far more people coming to this market in May and sold a lot more of the other things we brought.

If any OFMU board members read this I am asking you people to start putting some effort into this Tuesday market. Oxford needs a mid week market as there are people who cannot make it to a Saturday morning market not to mention it is currently the oldest market in town. Lets celebrate this market, not ignore it and this market has generated quite a bit of traffic for the Saturday market. You would be surprised at how many regular Tuesday market customers did not know about the Saturday uptown market (they knew about the Talawanda market, though) until they were told about it by us intrepid Tuesday vendors. At the very least, I would like to see a sign at the Saturday market advertising the Tuesday market. Though it would be better if the OFMU board put some time and imagination in promoting the Tuesday market the way they promote the Saturday market.