Our First Night Market

One of our resolutions at Born of the Water for 2019 is to be more visible within the community! So, we brought our bikini boutique to the Kailua Night Market on January 18th.

Set-Up Fiasco

Since this was our first event, the week following up to it was SUPER hectic and crazy. Trying to figure out the layout of our booth, from how many swimsuit sets we would be able to bring... it was honestly insane. I was extremely nervous because, of course, I wanted our first experience to be a hit.

The day of, I packed up nearly 200 bikinis, a couple of pieces of jewelry as well as our collections of Ao Organics and 'Ili Kope skincare. 

The market would be from 5PM to 9PM, and we had from 4PM to start our set up. To add to the stress, we encountered typical "Aloha Friday" traffic. We ended up arriving at the market location (which is now in a parking lot behind ChadLou's Coffee) around 4:30PM.

At that point, I was in a panic. I started haphazardly throwing everything I could onto a wagon to start setting up. While trying to set up our brand new canopy tent, it ended up snapping at a joint and breaking. Oh yea, and it started to drizzle. I honestly wanted to cry.

Fortunately, we were in a booth next to some friends and they were able to help us set up. Now, the struggle was attempting to coordinate our bikini rack, table, and pop-up dressing room in a 10' by 10' section.

Showtime!

Covered in stress and sweat, we finally finished setting up at 5:15PM. Honestly, it was a beautiful evening as the sun started to set and the drizzling started to subside. 

There were about 20 or so vendors, whom were all local businesses! There were food vendors, graphic artists, and a bunch of other interesting brands. Luckily for us, we were the only swimwear store present.

I spoke to a few individuals who flitted to our booth, and they were all attracted to La Pearl Swim's pineapple print rash guards, Kainoa Nani's activewear and Iwa Why's peacock print! A lot of these individuals had never heard of us or the brands we had, so it truly was a great experience to be able to expose our store and the amazing brands we carry.

Final Thoughts

The Kailua Night Market is a great event for local small businesses. I believe a small issue with this market is that there is very little advertising, as it was pointed out by a few Kailua residents. This event could be a huge success, and encourage individuals to shop local! Kailua has since become a popular location for tourists, so this event could also encourage visitors to purchase Hawaii-made products.

As for Born of the Water, we learned that we most likely won't need to bring our fitting room and the amount of products that we did. We figured out a few improvements we could make for our next market!

We are grateful for this experience, and can't wait for the next one.

Until next time, #bowbabes xoxo

The Kailua Night Market is every third Friday of the month! We won't be returning until April, but you can always stop by and visit our Honolulu location on South King Street to get a personalized fitting session, or we can accommodate out-of-state clients with a virtual consultation.