Boar's Head Report, Round Two

Ok, let's try this again, now that my brain is (hopefully) somewhat more functional.

Setup

First up, I'm going to re-post the drawing of Saturday's layout.

The one in yesterday's post was posted from my iPad, from the photo gallery on my iPad, and I noticed it was a little fuzzy. This one was sent to my Picasa web albums, and posted to here from Picasa, and I'm hoping it will be clearer if you click to embiggen.  Assume north is to the front, although it could have actually been any direction. As you probably have deduced, the larger/bolder grid squares are 1'.

If you can't click to embiggen, here's a link to the image at my Picasa web album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/44gOXB8tki51Q2U7XPqdJSsUF4vppfYaOoTc6z7LUvk?feat=directlink

We were up against a building wall to the south. We had neighbors to the east and west. The black lines around Thing 1 are the gridwall. It looks like there was a lot of dead space south of Thing 1 and the run southern display of belts, but it didn't feel like that much. 

As I said, there was some flail involved in setup. Part of it was feeling intimidated because we had lots of stuff to fit into the space, and the last few events we've been able to spread out for one reason or another, and Saturday we couldn't. 

Finally, we typically set up with tables and such across the front, or in a shallow U pointing out, and we sit behind. The open plan was a change, and I think we all had to wrap our heads around it. I don't think this being Thing 2's first outing really made a difference to setup, as it's the same footprint (just a little taller than) one of the 4' tables we've been using.

Why did I draw the setup out? In part because it worked out pretty well, and I actually wanted to remember this one for future reference. Secondly, Ron and I were discussing if we could have substituted in a 6' table for the 4' one in the center front (east west location approximate, but it was pretty much across from The Grinch). Ron, Xap, and I all agree that the answer to that question is "No, that extra foot taken out of the two openings would restrict traffic flow too much".

A small digression on naming: The big green tool chest that we use for a belt and hardware road case is now The Grinch. Thank you to Xap for the name.
 
It would also give us 6" less space for us between the table and The Grinch. Not shown here is the chair kind of tucked partway in the space between The Grinch and the gridwall, and the small table we had set up in the space between The Grinch and the front table.  

Sometime today I want to draw out how we had things set up at the last outdoor event, which was also a 10' x 20' space. 

Sales, etc.

Sales were good. We think we got a lot of new-member sales, and newbies almost always want a pouch to keep things on, which means a belt to wear the pouch on. 

We sold twice as many tails at Boar's Head as we did at Maneki Neko Con (the anime convention). A little mind-boggly at first thought. Hmm . . . number crunchy . . . we had roughly 2.5 times the sales at Boar's Head as at Maneki Neko, so apparently tails are roughly equally popular between SCA and anime fans. In any case, I need to order more tails, In two events we're down to half of what we started with.

There were times, especially in the morning, when all three of us were keeping busy with customers. And there was a stretch in the afternoon that was pretty quiet, which was good because it allowed Ron to go get a short nap. Having the driver awake for the ride home is always a Good Thing. 

During the day Ron finished the last two quivers. After lunch we put the shoulder straps on two leather satchels, and I finished up the three partially-completed pouches I'd brought.

Didn't sell any quivers, but I expect they'll go better at events with archery going on. Also didn't sell any drawstring bags. I'd made some more small ones, which explains it - new stuff likes to hang out for at least one event.

Only sold one of the disinterred musical instruments, a tin whistle. Need to remember when people ask prices that we're open to negotiation on them. 

Did not sell any jingle bells or the fabric satchels with definitely-Christmas teddy bears or kinda-winter-seasonal frolicking penguins, drat. 

Teardown and Sunday

More flail. We were all definitely tired by that point. Intimidated by having to pack up a bunch of new stuff: a bin of instruments, new pouches, and four new quivers. And I at least was actually overwhelmed by the addition of more packing space in Thing 2. 

Ron and Xap packed up the gridwall and everything on Thing 2, and Ron packed up the stringy bits (which mostly go into the ammo cans in the bottom of Thing 2 and instruments while I flailed around with pouches. I didn't do as thorough a job of nesting things in things as I normally do, and I know at the end I was throwing things into Thing 2 fairly higgeldy-piggeldy.

On the other hand, the bin that had held the new pouches, the bin that had held instruments, and another bin of pouches we'd brought inside to photograph and had been forgotten for a couple-few events all went home empty (-ish, one did get used to hold garb and the bags the garb came in), and odds and ends of the fourth bin also were packed into Things 1 and 2. So packing didn't go too badly. 

And Sunday I went through the last bin, which is stuff that comes in the house between events, and evicted a bunch of junk that had accumulated. So we came out ahead.

We were pretty much zombies yesterday, although I did get the bins sorted and Saturday's sales into the books.