Art By Mike
Hi Everybody!
I want to go on a bit about our Clear Creek event. Out of all the events we host this is my favorite. I will give you a bit of history on this one. For all you new members this is also how we started.
Back in 2016, myself and about 20 other vendors were at the Bidwell House participating in a show. The person that organized that show used to run the Clear Creek show. Bruce Hasty and I went to that person and asked if he would consider restarting the Clear Creek show. He told us he was not interested in reviving that show. We asked if he would mind if we went to the vendors and asked if they would be interested in attending Clear Creek in 2017. Out of the 20 vendors we talked to that day, 17 said they would for sure sign up. That evening, at a restaurant in Chester, a group of us hatched a plan to host an event the following year in Clear Creek. I took the names and email addresses of the vendors and turned that into our first email list. Over the next few weeks, we came up with a plan to make our group a co-op. We called ourselves the Professional Artisans Co-op. We were going along thinking everything was just peachy then the bad news hit. The Hwy that connects Greenville to Susanville was going to be shut down due to bridge repair. That road happened to be the only road that runs through Clear Creek. Unfortunately, due to the closure there were a few businesses in town that dried up and shut down. Clear Creek essentially, became a ghost town as far as business was concerned. We learned about this in October of 2016. As a group, we decided to press on. We went on clinging to the hope that the work would be finished by July. We learned in January of 2017 that this was not going to happen. Not wanting to give up on our event, we blanketed Greenville and Susanville with posters. Eva Gorman, one of our members, was instrumental in getting our event up on the Greenville city website. We put up road signs directing people from Greenville around Lake Almanor to our event. Although this added another 20 miles to the trip, the people still showed up! By an informal car count we had 2,000 people show up. Some of the vendors had their best show ever! The event was a total success. Businesses in Chester heard about our success. One of those businesses was Mill Creek Resort. They asked us if we would consider putting on a show at their place. We checked it out and decided to “go for it!”.
This was how we started. We now have over 225 vendors on our list, all with handmade products. Being a member of this group means you are entitled to learn about other shows happening in the areas we operate in that hold the same values as we do. Thanks for being a member.