Why we're a rain-or-shine event.

It’s pretty simple.

We live in Ohio. The weather will not always be perfect. Our lives won’t always be perfect. But we don’t define any of that as a negative.

Deciding to only be happy if everything is perfect will leave you being unhappy lots of the time.

Here’s why we choose to be a rain-or-shine event, and what that means for you.

• We don’t ever want you thinking that we’ll cancel for a little rain

• We don’t want you thinking you won’t have fun EVEN if there is rain

• We’re all small businesses and we don’t get a second chance at this- all our money is already spent and there’s no insurance for rain (trust us, we’re insured for everything we can be but voluntarily closing down because of rain is NOT one of the things)

• We want you to know we’re committed to YOU. All of us are. And we hope you know that.

• The hundreds of people we work with on the day of each market are committed to being there, and we can’t just re-schedule all the things

• We pull a temporary liquor license, hire police that are required to go along with that and invest about $10,000 in the bar for event days- and all that has to happen on the days listed on our permit (permits last for 3 days and must be obtained months in advance)

• Vendors don’t cancel even if it rains- they have a strict no cancellation policy in place with us that if they violate we’ll end up asking them to not come back

• Maybe other events don’t run like this, but we’re here to over-deliver to everyone, stay committed to our dream customers and clients (shoppers + vendors) and put on the best markets we can- no matter the weather

When we might cancel:

• If it’s super dangerous (that’s really rare) weather like a tornado or very large thunderstorm that will last hours or a storm that brings sustained winds of 35mph for at least one hour. That really makes it impossible for vendors to sell and it is just not good weather to be in.

How we’d cancel or delay (in the VERY VERY VERY rare occasion):

• If the storm is during setup:

  • If we’re experiencing really bad rain or wind during setup, we’d delay the opening of the market and we’d let people know that via social media, email and our website

• If the storm is in the middle of the market

  • We might have to take refuge during a storm and pause shopping. We’d announce that on social media and website. But this is also really rare. Most storms pass through quickly, luckily.

• If the storm is at the end of the market:

  • If a really big storm is coming through that will effect the end of the market or tear-down, we might enforce an early close-down of the market to keep everyone safe. We’d announce this via social media and website.

• If we can’t predict the storm:

  • Sometimes we just watch the weather and it says that we’re in the middle of a storm but there is no bad weather in sight. We use a radar program rather than clickbait / over-dramatic weather.com (really truly never get your weather there- despite the name because they’re always trying to panic you so you’ll stay glued to their site) to keep watch on things. If we need to make a weather call, we will.

How often have we had weather effect us?

• 1 market out of all of our 6 years of markets required cancelling during the middle of the day. It was a MASSIVE storm with wind, rain, hail and it was unusual but fierce.

• That means that our percentage of markets that go off without any cancellation or delay is 98.5%. That’s right, only 1.5% of the time we’ve been in business have we had to cancel or delay.

We truly believe that commitment is key to business success. Sure, braving ‘bad’ weather could be seen as a negative. We just know that we can have fun in any weather. And we know you can, too.

Thanks for always sticking in with us. And make sure you have your umbrella, just in case!

xo

Team Flea