Well, this is going to be a short one. Why? Because I wasn’t at the market this past week. I passed off the duties to my fabulous assistant/intern Krysti. She did a great job, with few calls or texts to me for clarification.

She had a few more vendors than expected, which resulted in a more dense market than usual. I hope that next year this will be our norm, but it’s going to take a lot of work to attract the vendors. I think we can do it.

The morning was pretty rainy, which is a good way to get a dead market. However, the rain cleared up around 11am (I believe – I’ll have to double check later), and the vendors all agreed that we had a large influx of patrons after the rain. In the end, they agreed it seemed like an about average day – despite the rain.

That morning, when I was working on re-arranging my whole office, a friend/helper asked me how many people I think we get on average. I told her I wasn’t sure, but that’s what I was counting for. My estimate, based on gut feeling & a quick (non-addition based) glance at the previous week’s counting caused me to estimate about 200 – 300 people/day, closer to 200.

Krysti managed to get the math done this time around, and we had 300 people come through the market this past Sunday. I have no idea if that’s a good number. Relative to other Sunday markets or relative to ourselves. But it was gratifying to know I could guess reasonably well.

So, last week Jen asked another question:

“Science! I love that you’re getting data and not just going with what “feels” right. Do you have a little clicky-counter you can use as people walk into the market? That’s probably the easiest way to be counting. Or tackle each visitor as they arrive, and attach radio tags to their earlobes so you can track their movements and learn where they congregate on non-market days so you can concentrate your advertising efforts.”

We have been offered a clicky-counter, but I have not managed to pick it up yet. Hopefully this week. Right now my awesome volunteers are using the tried & true “make a mark on a paper with a pen” method.

I’ve considered earlobe radio tags, but they’re out of our budget this year. Maybe next year.