Sunday 23rd May 2010 saw an early start for Cards And Candles For All Occasions as we loaded the car and headed off to Coventry for the Japanese Akita Welfare Trust national show… loading the car was a challenge in itself!!
Card stands, tables, gazebo, more display stands, boxes and boxes of stock as well as boxes of table coverings, promo material, etc… hmm, it was a tight fit to say the least!! Our trusty Honda Accord wasn’t too keen on how much stuff we were putting in!! I’m sure I heard the car shouting at us a few times on the way from Stoke on Trent to Coventry!!
We arrived at the Coventry Tech RFC ground bright and early to set up and on the roads towards the venue saw lots of people in high viz vests with ‘Marshall’ on the back so we guessed there was something else on the same day but we didn’t think too much of it at the time.
We got our stall set up… nice new gazebo’s first outing so we thought it’d take us a while to sort that out but we did pretty well and were all set up and even had time for breakfast before the event opened. Lovely.
As the morning progressed we soon realised that the local Coventry marathon was having a huge negative effect on the JAWT event… after speaking to our organisers it became apparent that the marathon marshalls/organisers had indeed closed roads which were not supposed to be closed according to what had initially been said. The two main roads surrounding our venue were closed for the marathon so as you can imagine there was a lack of people visiting the event.
There were lots of friendly dog owners with their beautiful dogs who were there as participants in the dog show but sadly, not many people were in the ‘spending’ frame of mind… everyone seemed to be focusing on the dog show, socialising and enjoying the weather.
The weather was glorious… roasting hot sunshine, a little breeze and blue skies. Mr Candles was enjoying the sun while I sat under the gazebo in the shade – I’m not a sunworshipper but even in the shade I managed to get burnt lol.
As they say though, every event is company exposure, a learning curve, a day out… did we learn anything from this event? Indeed we did!!! Gord needs to be more careful about where in the gazebo he displays his candles lol… the gazebo was incredibly hot, to the extent of losing three candles which went from looking pretty to a melted puddle in no time at all!!!
The committee members/staff of the Japanese Akita Welfare Trust did a fantastic job organising this event and the amount of work they put in was clear to see, so we really hope that the lack of visitors this year will not deter them from organising future events which we would definitely be interested in attending so watch this space.
If you would like to support JAWT’s work or join their forums, you can do so by visiting HERE.
Onwards and upwards now, time to start preparing for our next event 🙂
Laura xx
Buzzcrafts 