Hello once again and welcome to our weekly blog. We are still fresh with it within our realm of the rebrand so when it comes to scheduling what day we wanted to post this we were finally thinking of doing it on Mondays! After this past weekend of doubling down on markets and feeling the "tired" creep up, we found it would be easier to post our weekly review on Mondays instead of Sundays so that we had a chance to relax for the evening and not speed type a tired jumble mess (which ironically is happening now after sleeping away half the morning) This now means it gives everyone a chance to read at their leisure through the week if they would like to do so!
Moving straight into it though with that rather mouthful of a simple hello, lets jump into our weekly review and join us with what we did, what we thought, and where we will be next!
DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL
Starting strong with one of our bigger markets we attended! This past weekend, June 24th - 25th, was the annual Dragon Boat Festival held downtown Vancouver. This festival is the largest dragon boat festival in North America, and brings teams from all over the west coast to compete in racing along the False Creek waterside right in the heart of the city. This event not only brings hundreds of competitors, it also brings in thousands of people!
I didn't know what to honestly expect when we signed up for this event, or how to even prepare. I thought it was just going to be a nice little market gathering with random people passing by, but I was VERY wrong! The set up is massive and it truly covers most of the False Creek harbor. It spans across the seawall through science world and has live singing, variety shows, and so many vendors and venues there, food trucks, and a beer garden. I got excited when I arrived cause it felt like a true outdoor summer event with activities for everyone to enjoy and get lost in (in a good way of course)
Saturday morning we set up, but this time around while we were still doing our regular markets with Burnaby and White Rock, this event alone was our official rebrand launch in person as "The Rustic Tub". Now as I mentioned shortly ago, I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect the turn out that it was! We spent the week working and prepping to finish up our supplies, spent hours every night wrapping and labeling each item to perfection, and was prepping our team for the always "what if" scenarios and organizing our other members for the other markets. I had thought we came with ALOT of product, and in fairness we really did... but that just humbled us real fast as on day one items were flying off our shelves and we couldn't keep up. That night after a long day, we doubled down and tried to prep any single thing we could find left in our inventory and packed it to be ready to go. Well Sunday as nice of a gentle morning that was, and then it soon picked up and like a swarm of grasshoppers, it all happened fast! This has been the first time we were so excited to see so many items sell out from our booth! This also made us panic because we felt bad that some people weren't able to experience some of the exciting goods that were no longer there. This just makes us realize though that we can never be too prepared for any situation that can happen. It also makes us so excited for next years events when we can have our full set up with our full line for it as some of our items were more featured at our regular markets!
WEBSITE NEWS
With our focus moving onto to our online presence and striving for social media and online shopping, we wanted to touch base about our website.
We are constantly updating it almost everyday, watching it, and editing it. We know we had a couple people ask us questions about stock, shipping and we just wanted to go over some of those items now. The first one being with our stock, and that we finally made the changes to having everything in stock. We always want to make sure that our customers can a have access to all our products, which is why when things are officially out of stock, it will only be because of supply issue with some of our fragrances. Processing takes 3-5 days per order and we leverage that time so we can hand make it fresh for you, and ensure it is our high quality to be sent out.
We are also working on getting a QR code set up for the website because it truly is the future of the business card and that way you can see sales that are happening online that maybe not be in person.
Finally, we have switched out some of our shipping information in order to make things easier. In the past we normally have done free local shipping, however, this ended up being more costly in the long run. So we have officially switched our local delivery to free with any order over $50.00. We still have our FREE shipping with any order over $65.00 as well but as we all know with Canadian shipping it can be a VERY pricey adventure needless to say.
WHERE ARE WE THIS WEEK?
Since we are at the end of our weekly review, read below as to where and when we are this week and join us at markets or say hello especially for the long weekend!
Thursday June 29th - New West Farmers Market
Saturday July 1st - Ft. Langley Market
Sunday Jul2 2nd - White Rock Farmers Market
As always we can't thank you enough for the love, support, and encouragement from everyone, and we will see you all soon!
The Rustic Tub