EVENTS UPDATE / CORONA:
Heads up, I've now heard from most of the event organisers for the upcoming market dates and sadly but also not surprisingly, most of them officially are not going ahead. Make More Stuff & Endless Love has either cancelled or postponed their spring dates. Urban Makers have cancelled their March dates, but are holding fire on April.
But that seems to be the current scenario across the country at the mo and I genuinely believe it's the best course of action right now!
Side note, for all of us small biz owners this means we loose sales and our expected incomes with no backup, but also hotel and train fees, and also future potential sales. Most of us have already paid out for materials for stock for events too and we don't have any future events now to flog them at. The capalog is only at a baby stage, having being launched last year and for most of us january/feb/march is generally a quiet time for sales anyway, so it hasn't even taken off this year yet! Truthfully the only way to get word out about a new biz is to market it, so that means going out to events and talking about it and showing stock.
Personally my main incomes from this wee brand and as a freelance milliner, come from events. That's either events selling caps or from theatre and weddings for my other millinery and costume work and part time jobs. Sooo the future is a little precarious & unpredictable right now! As almost all events are now on pause. And a big part of working in the industries that I work in, is that a lot of us are casual... with no contracts. One company I worked at last month had at least 50% of their staff as freelancers and they have been freelance for years, and I mean several years, not just a couple of years. That just is the norm in MOST theatres in the Uk. So right now we're on our own. We're not sure what access we will have to any wages back up. This is one of the reasons I wanted to set up the capalog, so I had a sustainable income in the long run, cos I certainly haven't been able to find it in the workplace. I'm not there yet though.
BUT it seems like we are all in this boat and to be honest as humans we have faced big things like this before, things that take over the whole world and drastically change generations. We can get through it. Also it is only temporary. And the longer we faff and don't stay at home waiting for a clearer message the longer it will last too.
So please please support your local independents when we come out of this, if you can. But ultimately there's a much bigger prob at the moment that we need to control and just do the right thing for, stay in and wait it out.