The Bazaar & A Crazy Idea

Last April, I brought back some personalized acrylic cups (which I purchased and had made at Threadworks in Lake Charles- so if you're looking for some--- go check out Mrs. Melissa's stuff) from the states and gave to a few close friends as gifts and they immediately caught the attention of fellow compounders around here!  Those cups are everywhere in the states, but it is NOTHING we would ever find here in Saudi.  For some reason, Steph and I got the brilliant idea to order 150 cups (6 large boxes) and have them shipped overseas to make them available to personalize and sale at our compound's annual Bazaar (it's like a craft fair, with vendors selling merchandise).  It took approximately 3 months to get the cups ordered, shipped, delivered, shipped again, and delivered to our door (not to mention it took my mom a trip to Houston to pick them up from some friends' house who went and picked them up from a friends house and she brought them to Beaumont to another friends house-- all in order for them to get to us in a "timely manner").  Whew- I'm tired just thinking about it!

Anyways, we let everyone know the cups were coming and would be available in the fall and Steph and I went to town creating order forms, choosing writing styles, collecting rolls of vinyl, selecting emblems and images to be put on the cups and October 1st we started pre-selling the personalized cups, along with snack trays, clipboards, folders, and memory cork boards.  To our surprise, everything was a big HIT and we got busy.  For two weeks leading up to the Bazaar and the last two weeks since the Bazaar we have been cranking out orders left and right!  We had a blast doing this project and as big as it seemed to get, I don't know that we were ever overwhelmed (okay maybe once or twice).  It was a lot of fun making stuff for friends and seeing the excitement on people's faces to realize there were practical items around that could be purchased as gifts and for personal use.  Steph and I have some wonderful friends who were gracious enough to help us set up shop, who took orders while we filled the orders, and who would come and sit at my house to keep us company and stay organized with all our orders!  

Stephanie basically was running the Bazaar with a few other women so she was able to snatch up the best location for our booth-- it was filled with a work area and all!  Oh, the perks of having friends in high places!!  Haha!  So, the night before the Bazaar we brought over all our STUFF, set things up, and created a plan on once orders were placed, how'd they get filled based on priority (people from all around come to our Bazaar and we weren't interested in driving to unfamiliar places to make deliveries), and then we devised a system to know when someone's order was ready for pick up.  We're so glad we did this since the day of the Bazaar was crazy, but everything ran smoothly!  We really did sale a lot of "merchandise" and we promised all those on our compound to have their order ready within the week-- this alleviated a TON of pressure and didn't let us feel overwhelmed to finish all our orders the day of the Bazaar.  

Some of our sweet friends who helped us!

Our booth- and work station behind it!

All the loot-- we tried to be as organized as possible!

Working on fulfilling orders!  

Like the string we attached across the opening to hang order forms based on priority??!! 

A few items we sold to some friends of ours!

In order to stay organized and keep up with the amount of work we had to do, we set up shop in my house to have everything out when it was needed.  My house looked like this for several weeks, but Stephanie and I were able to both have a work area and there was room for all the stuff we used.  

Just some of the cup orders we filled a few days after the Bazaar!  

This has really been a fun project to work on and I'm happy to say we sold out of all our clipboards, snack trays, and memory cork boards!  We literally have about 10 cups left (praise the Lord), and are daily getting emails from people requesting stuff.  I'm glad we went out on a limb and took this on.  It's fun watching people walk around the compound with their cups!!  Someone asked us this morning what we were going to do next year..... hmmmm... guess we better start planning that now!!