St Kilda Beach Night Market Part 2

Firstly, its over and here are the stats:

10 Markets planned.

2 Cancelled for bad weather (weather turned out to be beautiful)
2 Added in March to cover this (one of which was cancelled for weather)
3 Rained out but not cancelled, ie we still set up and then were rained on.
1 Missed as on holiday
2 Sold nothing but a Frisbee
2 Sold something more than a Frisbee

Apparently it was the worst year in memory for weather. Now Victoria is in drought and has been for a very long time, so I am as happy as the next person for rain, but I am a bit amazed that it either rained or was forecast to rain on 5 of the 10 market days. Some would argue that there is perhaps a message in that statistic, ie don't do St Kilda Beach Night Market on a Thursday.

We also met some very interesting people:

 Rohan from Rock Tease, who detests all forms of music apart from heavy rock, and would get into a bout of depression when the 4th hour of dub reggae started pumping from the nearby sound system. He is about to head over to New York to live the American Rock Dream with his partner,

Cactus Man, from Glasgow, Scotland via Israel, who had a product that didn't mind the rain.... yes you guessed it, the humble Cactus. He also introduced me to two things I had never seen before: A Cactus Fridge Magnet and a Cactus Necklace. On the latter not sure how that works, aren't cacti prickly! Unbelievable successful.

We had a couple of witches next door to us, who had setting up and packing up down to fine art form. They would turn up at 4.30 and be ready to go by 4.35. Spooky! We took over an hour to set up and to pack up. But the prize for time to set up has to go to a local Melbourne couple who every week built this pretty much from scratch:

They call themselves Champ and make wonderful bags and wooden carvings, but this extraordinary stall takes close to 2 hours to put up from scratch with electric screwdrivers, mobile vices. Definitely living their work.

Would we do it again? At the moment the jury is out, but gut feel is probably not. The people there were great, Michele and Maree, the organisers, were superb and had to deal with an incredibly difficult season, but we didn't sell enough and weren't speaking to enough of our target market to justify the time and cost.

A great experience all the same.