01/05/2025
Good afternoon bazaar vendors and shoppers. We hope the new year finds you well. If we could have a moment of your time, we have an important but difficult announcement.
Here at FSMB, there are several people behind the scenes. Two partner families form the LLC, while our friend Karl, who has only missed one show in 9 years, provides music all day long. We are, for the most part, regular folks with full time jobs and families. Over the last 9 years, our families have continued to grow, and we now have a total of 9 adult children in 9 different states, one middle school age child involved a million activities, and gobs of grandkids among our families. Many of those kids have helped out at shows over the years, and have become fond of you all as well, and vice versa.
Over nearly a decade, we have seen many changes in the business, and have been thrilled with our show's continued growth and success throughout any challenges that have arisen. We have been proud of our resilience and ability to adjust and always hold a high quality event that our vendors and shoppers can count on and enjoy.
We have been talking about how long to continue our shows for a couple years, because burnout is certainly high in this business when you work at it like we do. We are also now faced with new tax regulations in 2025 that will not hurt us, but we feel are unfair to vendors.
Post covid, the whole world sort of had a wake up call about the value of time spent with loved ones; however, we decided to continue, because the show was still very successful and we certainly didn't want to disappoint vendors or fans. In fact, at that time, we ALL needed the show more than ever. We have circled back each year to reassess our stance, and recently decided that we are ready to let the show go, spend more time with family, and/or move on to other ventures. It's worth noting that none of us are super young or in perfect health anymore, and these shows kick your butt!
We realize this will be a great disappointment to many supporters, and perhaps even cause anger in some cases. We ask that you please extend to us some grace and understanding, as this decision is emotional and agonizing to us as well. We were friends at the start with our partners, and have become family throughout the last 9 years. It is not easy to let something go that is highly successful, knowing so many of our close vendor friends are heavily invested in the events as well.
There is a just a point that you reach and recognize that the decision is inevitable at some point, and we don't want to keep it going until the decision is forced. We want to look back at our last show, and 9 years of shows, and know we gave it our all and this was the pinnacle.
These have been the best days we could have ever asked for, and we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for the love and friendship.
Sincerely,
The FSMB crew
Heather, Rita, Greg & Shawn, Karl and all the kids in our families 🩵🩷💛🧡💚
