Today we’d like to introduce you to Courtney Yeater.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Courtney. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started in my kitchen in 2012. I started painting furniture and decided to create a Facebook page to share my creations. We quickly grew and started selling quite a bit of furniture. This lead to becoming a vendor in a local consignment store. I needed more space so I rented a little warehouse to store my furniture and work in. When I announced the exciting news on Facebook, everyone thought I was opening a storefront.
With all the excitement. I decided to open on a few days a week that I was going to be there painting. It was going well and I had some friends ask if they could put some items in the shop to sell even though I was not open very much. I eventually had several vendors and my mother started helping me and we were open more. We expanded to the room next door and filled the shop so much we had to pull out half the inventory outside to be able to open for the day!
Within six months, we had greatly outgrown the shop and didn’t have enough room for all the customers to park so we found a bigger shop in Liberty, TX. It was 5,500 sq ft. with about 5 acres and had tons of parking in the front because it used to be an old car lot and was set back off the road quite a ways. To let everyone know we were there and to help local small businesses, we decided to let vendors set up in front of the shop one weekend a month. It was a last minute idea as we were moving to the new location and our first trade days was held the first weekend we were open in the shop which was one day after opening day in June of 2014! We had five vendors that weekend. They all enjoyed it so we decided to do it again the next month. Within four months, it has grown so much that we rented the 2 acres next door for parking and another 2,000 sq ft building. By December, the trade days had grown in popularity so much that I decided to close the shop during the month and only open on the week of the show.
With the growing parking and traffic issue, we looked about a mile down the road to the Trinity Valley Exposition Fairgrounds which is 60 acres and has many buildings. In February 2015, we announced we were moving to the TVE Fairgrounds and had our first show there in March.
It was a hard move for the first year because we were off the beaten path and didn’t have as many vendors compared to the size of TVE. It also rained on us every month and we were even there through a tropical storm, but the vendors believed in the show and most stuck it out in the heat, rain, and smaller amount of customers. They believed in me more than I did at times and a huge reason I kept going. We have grown to almost 300 vendors and have anywhere from 10,000 to 15.000 customers out per month.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No, it has not been a smooth road. It’s been heartache, blood, sweat and lots of tears but it has been worth it. I’ve learned a lot and grown with the show. I never intended to start this or to grow to what it is. I didn’t even know what a trade day was six years ago. It just happened and I learned by talking to the vendors and listening to their suggestions. I made decisions through lots of prayers because I had no idea what I was doing! If God would’ve told me from the beginning where He was leading me I probably would’ve run the other way screaming! LOL! But that’s why He lead me one step at a time and one day at a time.
When I moved the shop to Liberty and started to the trade days, the original idea was to help bring traffic to the shop. I loved what I did and had plans to expand the painting part of my business. The trade days kept getting bigger but the traffic in between the trade days was slow. We had some big days here and there but it really was not enough to keep the shop open. It was devastating to me when I decided to close the shop and just open it for trade days once a month. I took it as a failure when I thought that God had to lead us to this new building for greater things. It was not making enough money in between to pay the bills and staff to be there with no customers coming through but once a month. The owners of the building did not like that we were only open one weekend a month and then to have the amount of traffic we had there all at once was a concern for them as well as the city officials. So, after only being open just for trade days for two months, I made the decision to move to the TVE Fairgrounds. People told me it wouldn’t work. Others told me that it had been tried before and failed, but I felt this was where we were lead to go.
The first year there was really hard. We lost the drive-by traffic we had at our old location. We were little fish in a big pond now with 60 acres to fill. We went from exploding at the seams with vendors and customers, to what seemed like a trickle of traffic flow and not enough vendors to fill more than two of the buildings. I had a large group of vendors that were at the other location with me decide to all leaves the show at once and one-third of the vendor spots came available. This left huge holes in my main areas. I was devastated and thought I was getting ready for another failure. I was running the show as the only employee because I couldn’t afford to pay anyone else. My dad came out to help me with picking up trash and cleaning up after the show. I think I cried almost every Monday after the show for the first six months when I was there cleaning up because I was so exhausted and felt so hopeless. It was long hours and a lot of hard work, and to top it off, I had no idea what I was doing! I really had a lot of doubt that I had really messed up and was heading towards another failure. Little did I know, then was that God was not setting me up for failure with any of it. He was just transitioning into something I didn’t even know that I wanted or loved to do!
After a long, hot Texas summer, we started to grow and were gaining more customers and vendors! Each month seemed to get bigger and better and I was finally able to get some help! We had some huge growing pains and we just figured it out as we went along. Now, looking back, I laugh to think about how we managed to get through the week the way we did!
I still remember the first trailer full of trash that we had after the show. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and started crying! LOL! To some, it would look like a huge pile of stinky trash, but all I saw was that we had a lot of people come out that weekend to have so much trash. Even as I hauled it to the dump and slung the trash over the side of the trailer and into the dumpsters below, I realized that God was leading me the whole way, and I didn’t even care I was covered in 3-day old trash juice! Sometimes, God is trying to get us to lay down one dream, not to watch us fail, but to shift us into what we were made to do.
Faux Real Trade Days Liberty – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in promoting small businesses! I love being able to be as excited about other’s businesses as they are about their own. I rejoice with them when they sell out and I cry for them when they have a hard month. I’ve been told I take it more to heart than the vendors do.
We are a huge family and we all work together to help one another. Our vendors are great, we help each other when there’s a need, and we care about our customers. You can tell a difference in the atmosphere of the market. The vendors work so hard to set up their little stores for the weekend and then tear it all down again in a few short hours. They amaze me every month at how hard they work, but they will always stop whatever they are doing to help out another vendor if need be.
What sets us apart is our monthly themes for each show. They are a lot of fun for vendors and customers and make it a very exciting atmosphere. Vendors and customers dress up according to the theme and we even give away a $300 shopping spree each month for the winner of the costume contest! It definitely keeps things interesting!
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success to me is when we all work together to produce a great show. Some months are harder than others and shows are a gamble. There are so many variables that can affect the show that I quit trying to figure it out. We just do the best we can do and then watch how it goes. We hustle and try to go over and above what we think we should do and we pour every ounce of our heart and energy into what we do. We try to make sure the vendors and the customers enjoy themselves most of all. I love to see people smiling as I walk around, whether it’s from the treasure they found or the kind greeting they received.
Contact Info:
- Facebook: Faux Real Trade Days Liberty
- Instagram: Faux Real Trade Days
- Website: www.fauxrealtradedays.com
Image Credit:
Faux Real Trade Days
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