The biggest reason not to do outdoor markets and festivals:

This weekend was supposed to be on of the biggest markets of the year for me. The Northern Utah Trail Fest is where all the locals who love natural soaps hangout for a weekend, camping, running, biking, learning about the natural world. In previous years it has been wonderful.

This year however we got a Pineapple Express that dumped 2.5 inches of rain over a 48 hour time period. I knew it was coming, but was reassured that the festival would go forward.

At 2 pm on Friday I just barely got my tent up before a shower came over. Other vendors were setting up so I thought we’re all doing this together hopefully we don’t get washed away!

My booth looked like this:

I pared back a lot of what I normally bring just incase the heavens opened up and dumped a ton of rain on us. Soap and water are not friends so I didn’t want anything I had to get wet. By the evening time it started to drizzle lightly, then around 7:30 I had a feeling I should pack up. I did and just as I was heading for my car light began to streak across the sky over the open meadow we were in. The lightning came hard and fast and I got all my soaps to my car just in time. I ran back to my tent, lowered it just as the wind picked up and the heavens opened.

I’ve never felt so thankful for my car before, as I drove home through the mountians in a hail storm. The hail was so thick I couldn’t even see the road, I had to pull over. It was like being in white out blizzard. I was later informed that it made it from my house to where I was in the mountains in 5 minutes. The storm was so strong and moved so fast. I was 12 miles from my house!

I made it home safe and sound. It continued to rain through the night and when I got up at 7 am the next morning it was driving rain and wind still. My heart sunk to think about selling in the rain. Would my tent even be ok?

When I got back to my tent I was relived to see my tent was fine, but the tent next to me was completely broken. So was the one behind me. I ended up opening my booth after several hours of waiting for wind and rain to die down. This is what my booth looked like the next day:

I literally sold soap from my soap boxes…hehe. It was very cold, and raining and windy. Even my relatively water proof tent canopy began to collect condensation on the inside and it would drip down on to the tables. There was water running down the meadow.

The real lesson here is how do you know when to pack it up?

Doing out door markets is a gamble, often an expensive one. I found myself in the sunk cost fallacy of “I paid so much money for this, I want to at least make the cost of being here back so I’ll stay.” At one point I had a friend drop by and he said to me as we held my tent down from the blowing wind, “Can I pay you to leave?” Luckily, that was the last of the wind gusts. After that it just drizzled until I gave up, it was just me and the other vendors.

Sometimes with you win some and sometimes you lose some. In business it’s all about taking the leap into the unknown. At least I learned a lot about people and what they will come out for and how to deal with all my equipment in the worst of weather conditions.