Hackett Park Craft Fair: Our First Market

Backcountry Community,

For our first ever blog, we thought we'd talk about the Hackett Park Craft Fair - our first ever market, and the unofficial launch of our company. The fair was on the weekend of August 14th in Sechelt, British Columbia. It was a beautiful weekend on the Sunshine Coast, clouded only by the forest fire smoke coming from the wildfires in the British Columbian interior.

This was going to be the first time we ever tried to sell our product face-to-face, and how our product would be received by the folks at the market was up in the air. The smell of the smoke from the fires was a great reminder of why we started this company: To contribute to forest fire prevention and management. Remembering this, we went into Day 1 feeling motivated and focused. We want to thank Emma and all the organizers of Hackett Park for making the whole process a breeze.

The market itself was a massive success for us. It was a busy weekend, with both the Saturday and Sunday bringing in great crowds, making all of the vendors excited. We met a ton of awesome people and sold out of our product, generating $300 in donations to the BC forest fire relief efforts!

Being an outdoor market, it was a perfect place for us to demonstrate our Bonfire Candles™ in full glory as we were able to demonstrate how to start, use and extinguish our Candles safely.

We want to sincerely thank everyone we met at Hackett Park, your feedback and tremendous support for our product was exactly the kick in the ass we needed to get this brand off the ground. It was awesome to see our candles connect with kids and adults, men and women, backpackers and patio-lovers alike.

Due to the overwhelming success of the market, we've decided to apply for any and all craft markets in BC that we can. So far, we've committed to the Portobello West markets located in Vancouver (Aug 28, Sep 18, Nov 21 & 22).

Come check us out if you're around. If there's a market you'd like to see us participate in please send an email to malik@backcountrybonfires.com. The next few weeks will be about ramping up production, ironing out our e-commerce strategy and trying to build connections with you - all of our customers.

Happy adventuring,

Backcountry Bonfires