A Happenstance Moment

From time to time our retailers in the market will be guest blogging on here.  Today we hear from a trader who has joined... or more accurately returned, to the market- Christina from Happenstance.  Read on to hear her story, and why GO4 Market Cafe has been so good for some indie businesses in different ways.

This week marks my return to GO4 as a trader. It has been a strange year and half all in all and central to all of this has been GO4.

Back in June 2013, I set up for the first time as a pop up under the name Apple Crisp. I was unsure and rather apprehensive as to how successful my pop up would be, I had previously had very mixed success at fairs and to be entirely honest was slowly building up on line sales through Folksy. But I really needed to be more confident in my handmade wares and meet and greet the folk of Colchester.

Who knew what that first Saturday would bring in terms of adventure and learning? I met a great group of creative and supportive people who encouraged me and inspired me and before long I took Apple Crisp full time to GO4. It was a steep learning curve in terms of manning my shop and being able to keep making stock, at one point my sewing machine moved in with me and I sat in the central aisles of the church humming away!

The next stage of my adventure was moving away from the handmade, I think I lost a bit of confidence with it and felt that to be able to keep this creative dream alive I needed to digress. I gained an insight into buying and selling after a number of trips to Lincolnshire alongside another trader and the next step was inevitable...partnership!

I did away with Apple Crisp, and went headlong into this new adventure. And phew, what a time that was! Selling at Spitalfields, spending heady mornings in auctions at Diss, and a lot of time dirty cleaning and "making good" unloved furniture. We felt we outgrew the space that was GO4 and moved into a new workshop and expanded, maybe that was the error, expanding too quickly and shortly after we decided to go our separate ways.

I plunged into a bit of a depression to be honest, what was I going to do? I had invested time and money and felt rudderless. What I came away with was a need to get back to making and being creative in my studio but with a strong knowledge that I loved finding and searching for vintage bits and pieces for the home, and in a happenstance moment, I knew what I was meant to do!

I had to come back to where it all started, I needed the encouragement from those around me, and I had to combine my two passions. So if you pop by my little shop at GO4, you will find personally sourced and curated vintage items for the home alongside my handmade homeware creations, I look forward to welcoming you soon and making you part of the next step in my GO4 adventure.

Christina x

You can find Happenstance in the shared space with Hidden in the Rafters over by the font as you enter the building. You can follow the Happenstance Facebook page here or visit their Folksy shop here.  The motto above are available as mounted prints n the market.

Thanks to Christina for her sharing story, it is great to show how the indie businesses in the church are real people and have real stories behind them, and equally lovely to see how GO4 Market cafe has supported her along the way of developing her business ventures.  We will be hearing form Lesley's Girls Vintage on the next blog post.