The Beginning of Retail and Events (1997-2007)
A few weeks ago, I started writing a series of blogs about Meadowbrooke Gourds and how we got started 30 years ago. If you missed the other blog, you can read it here, The Very Early Years of Meadowbrooke Gourds (1993-1996). The next years took us in a direction we didn’t think we would go but it turned out wonderful!
By 1997, we had separated the areas for production into small rooms including washing, crafting and finishing. But by 1999, we found once again we had outgrown the space and technology that was being used so we once again had to start making some adjustments to the building. Over the next few years, we built separate buildings attached to the existing building for production providing more room for people, gourds and storage.
Around 2000, we started to hold field trips for local schools and tours for garden groups. This started the buzz about the place on Potato Road and what a neat place it was. We started having locals showing up at the farm to shop. Of course, this caused a minor problem because we did not sell retail or have a gift shop. We opened up our shipping area to these customers to shop but it wasn’t very glamorous. We decided in December of 2003 to open up for a few weekends with a very small, make-shift store (as shown in the picture, about the size of our current register area) to shop in and were blown away from the interest. This was the beginning of our retail adventure.
In 2004, we decided to keep the little store open with limited hours and shared the room our shipping department. We would enlarge it for the Fall and Winter season which always brings more people to the farm. In 2005, we created our very first Jack Shaq Cottage. This cottage can still be found on our farm sitting across the street from the gift shop. In the Fall of 2005, we used the Jack Shaq to help us with our first Fall Create Your Own. This class was a walk in, and customers would come to put their own designs on raw dried gourds and then the design would be pushed through the mouth of the Jack Shaq where our very talented crafters would be sitting to hand cut the designs. Our Create Your Owns for every season became very popular. Today, we still host Create Your Owns four times a year for Spring, Coastal, Fall and Winter.
In 2006, we held our very first Gourd Egg Hunt. This was a free event for customers to come and look for 1000’s of gourd and prize eggs on a 10-acre lot. This event sold out in hours. In 2008, we had our first Oops Sale in a small 20x20 tent across the street from the store. It was held as part of our Summer Celebration on a warm summer evening in July. In 2009, some who have been with us for a while may remember walking around in ankle high water in the Oops Sale because it was pouring and the rain flooded the tent. Nobody seemed to care or notice, they just took off their shoes, waded and shopped. We realized then that we had some pretty awesome customers.
As retail was growing, we also were spreading our imagination to see if we could expand our selection of products. In 2005, we introduced three new lines and designs. The first was our Whisper Collection of greeting cards, note pads, grocery list and prints. Whisper was loosely designed around the Sphinx Moth that pollinates gourds in the evening. The designs were water colored but lasted only about two years. The next line introduced was The Gourd Patch. These gourds had very whimsical faces and each came with a gourd seed and planting instructions. They reminded me very much of little fairies. They were very time-consuming and only came in limited quantities. The last line we introduced in 2005 was the Blue Mountain Collection. Each of these gourds for every season was signed, numbered and most had hand painted faces. Each came boxed separately with a label. We would switch them out yearly, coming up with new designs for several years before we retiring this line.
One thing you may not know about us is that we used to hold a contest during our Create Your Owns. Starting in 2007, we let customers design gourds with the help of our crafters to enter. They would be on display and would be voted on and one winner was picked each year to have their designs included in the following year’s catalog. We would mix it up as to what season we would be doing this for each year. The very first gourd that won was PJ Jack-O-Lantern designed by Paula Jo. For her creativity, she was paid a percentage of each sale and would get a check at the end of the year for as long as the design was kept in active production. It was always very interesting to see all the designs our customers would come up with. They had very good imaginations!
TO BE CONTINUED….