Well, it’s over! The first ever Renegade London closed its doors at 6pm yesterday, and boy did we have a fantastic weekend!
Adam and I headed down to London on Friday morning, loaded up with one giant suitcase full of Finest Imaginary goodies and an ikea bag with other display bits. I was sort of worried about the difficulties we’d have with the tube when we got there due to our bags, but it was all good, Adam was a trooper! I have a ridiculous fear of down escalators, it’s much better than it used to be but they’re always so busy in the underground so having to negotiate them + an ikea bag wasn’t on my list of fun things to do in London.
We had early check-in at the hotel too, so we were able to drop everything off and head over to Shoreditch for a scout around before I had a meeting at 3pm. Adam found the Renegade venue so we knew where to head on Saturday morning. Our Friday evening ended with a trip to Wahaca and an early night, saving our energy for the busy weekend ahead!
We got to the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane at around 9am on Saturday morning, just before my booth-mate Claire of Miso Funky arrived. After arranging our tables (we had a table each in a shared booth space) we all set to working on our stall setups. My bunting worked well, I think, and I was pleased with the stall overall.
The doors opened at 11am and the first customers started dropping by, my first sale was to a lady who said she’d been eyeing up the Grr and Arg necklaces online but wanted to come and buy them in the flesh :D
Saturday turned out to be the busiest day of the weekend, even though we’d been told that Sunday was usually the busiest day around that area. The customer traffic peaked at around 1pm and continued to be really busy until around 4.30-5pm. Adam had planned to spend Saturday and Sunday wandering around London on his own, but seeing as it was so busy he ended up sticking around and doing drinks/food/coffee runs for me and Claire, and also helping out when either of us wanted to stretch our legs. I ended up selling out of my gold Grr and Arg sets before 2pm on Saturday, which is awesome, but also makes me wish I’d brought some more with me!
We’d originally planned to go out for drinks with a few people on the Saturday night, but we were 100% wiped out after a manic day, so just went for a quick one at The Golden Heart before heading back to the hotel, grabbing a subway and crashing. Ps. I would not recommend the travel lodge on City Road. It’s wank, even by travel lodge standards.
Sunday meant we could turn up a little later because most of the setting up was done, it also gave us a little chance to have a wander around and buy some goodies. I’ll do a separate post about the things that we picked up at the market, there were some absolutely amazing vendors there. It was a steady day of sales, and not super super busy, and there was an epic food market taking place on the floor below which meant I had some excellent japanese food for lunch – yumyum!
At 6pm the fair was over, Adam and I packed up quickly and said our goodbyes to Claire as she headed for her train back to Glasgow. We ended up walking all the way from Brick Lane to Kings Cross as we had some time to kill (and we’re from Yorkshire, so unwilling to £4 each on 3ish tube stops) before our train. We got home at 11pm last night, and at 5am this morning I took Adam to the train station again for his work trip to Edinburgh – phew!
Overall, Renegade was unbelievably awesome and better than I’d hoped! I got to meet some long-time internet friends for the first time, and some other awesome people who I hope to keep in touch with. If you came down this weekend then THANKYOU! :D
Next stop, Chicago!
Your bunting did indeed, look fantabulous!
yay! thanks missus! lovely to meet you there, too! :D
Whoop whoop for Renegade! What an amazing venue. I came and bought a set of ARRGHHH and GRRRR necklaces from you… lovely stall. Sound! x
the venue was great, so much space!! thanks for buying them :D
Was so nice to fiiiinally meet you :) Come down to London again, for non-selling purposes, would be ace to hang out :)
I definitely need to do this, every time we’ve been to London recently has been for ulterior motives!
Your table looked great! And so organized! Mine is always a hot hot mess! Did you find that throughout the day, you had to keep fixing up your display after everyone picked up your goodies to check them out?
yep! someone literally picked up ALL the tshirts and just piled them back down, Adam had to refold them all (I was wandering around somewhere else at the time)!
I was your first customer! It was great to come down and meet you and so many other wonderful, inspiring makers. I was buzzing for days afterwards at all the wonderful things I had seen.
I’ve worn my necklaces lots of times over the last few weeks and had so many people asking where they could get one. Hopefully they have all popped over to Finest Imaginary to bag their own!