setting up shop - our first street fair!

In celebration of our anniversary, we are continuing down memory lane. Above is a picture of our very first street fair (Heidi is in the picture hiding behind a journal.) Up to to just a couple of weeks before this picture was taken, we were exclusively doing custom invitation designs for clients (or at least trying too!) A friend of ours who makes jewelry invited us to share a booth at the Los Feliz Street Fair. We said, “Sure, why not!” Then the reality sunk in that we didn’t actually have any product to sell! Oops! Better get to work!

So for 2 weeks we scrambled to create cards, journals, notepads, letter writing paper and scrapbooks to sell at the fair. We were at Kinko’s almost everyday printing up product. We also bought some funky wire and glass candle holders from a closeout place to complement our display. Now in looking at this picture, I have to say I am proud of what a nice display we did the first time out. We’ve got all different levels to our merchandising: things propped up, things in baskets, a makeshift card rack. We even made a sign (that we colored in by hand) with our logo at the time. We used that sun logo for the first 3-4 years of our business. Our little brother, Nick, still considers it to be the “real” RSP logo and we recently had to make some t-shirts for him with that sun!

The fair was successful enough that we covered our costs, made a little money and got some great feedback on our designs. It was a really exciting thing for us….face-to-face contact with our customers! At the end of the day we had a clipboard filled with customer addresses (this was pre-email) for our mailing list and we were ready to do it again real soon.  We still cherish meeting our customers in person and it’s the reason why we still participate in events like Renegade Craft Fair and Unique LA whenever we can.

-Susie