This is my nephew Sam wearing my Ballard Farmers Market sweatshirt and watching the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. (Actually, I just love this picture and was looking for an excuse to use it.)
I have quite a few articles of clothing with logos from different farmers' markets, but I try to be careful to not wear the wrong shirt to the wrong market. I wouldn't exactly say there's bad feeling between the administrators of different (competing?) markets, but as a vendor I do sometimes feel like I'm doing a careful dance trying not to step on anyone's toes.
I'm guessing that these administrators' feelings towards one another must be similar to the way I feel about the other prepared food vendors. I like them as human beings and I generally respect the work they do but, having made my own choices to do things in my own way, I often find myself finding fault with the way they run their operations. It makes me crazy when someone comes up to my booth and asks me where they can find a competing prepared food vendor. That must me similar to what some market administrators experience when they see vendors wearing gear advertising other organizations' markets.
Or maybe they don't even think about it at all, and I'm fabricating an issue where none actually exists...
3 comments:
You are welcome to wear other markets' gear at our market, Devra, because we know that promoting ALL farmers markets helps us grow our consumer base. That's a good thing! At the KC market manager meeting today, there was a call for more collaboration and less competition among local markets. I don't know if that is realistic, esp. between nonprofit and for-profit markets, but hey, nothing ventured . . .
Thanks, Julie. I appreciate the sentiment. And I'm going to go ahead and put that lovely sticker you gave me on the back window of my truck, and see if anyone has a problem with it.
People come ask us for your lemonade and tamales all the time! At the markets and in the shop. It's not at all an issue, except for the "Vegans with attitude"
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