Crazy Lady’s Market promotes local vendors

By Grant Cree

Crazy Lady’s Market is an arts and crafts shop in Morinville. The owner is Cindy Brown, an avid quilter and knitter who provides supplies for fellow hobbyists who are passionate about crafting.

“I make doll clothes and had always been doing farmer’s markets on weekends, and I thought vendors need a place to sell their stuff,” said Brown, who launched the store with her husband Rob in June 2018 on 100 Avenue. She has no regrets about being her own boss after spending several years as a provincial government employee.

According to Crazy Lady’s Market’s Facebook page, the store carries an extensive line of needlework supplies, fabrics, puzzles, games, yarns, doll clothes, handmade vendor items and much more. “When we opened, we had 55 local area vendors,” Brown said, and she personally selected each vendor to carry items in her store that sell on a commission basis.

“It kind of worked out that way over time,” she said. ”And now we’ve weeded that number down to the ones that are the best sellers of all the different products that we had. I say if your products sell, we gain, and you gain. It works far better for us that way.”

Brown firmly believes in supporting nearby vendors. “I’m always shopping local. I don’t want to drive into Edmonton if I don’t have to. And I don’t believe in online shopping unless I’m absolutely desperate. So I try and stay totally local.”

In addition to carrying arts and crafts supplies, Crazy Lady’s Market offers food products ranging from soup to nuts on shelves next to pickles and jams. “A guy in Lac La Biche makes the soup mixes,” said Brown. “The nuts are a really good seller made by a vendor near St. Albert, and he does all the roasting there himself.”

The homemade pickles and jams are consistently bestsellers in her store frequented by regular customers who spend hundreds of dollars on those items every month. “That’s what we are all about, is supporting local and promoting local,” said Brown.

After the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in 2020, Brown noticed a dramatic increase in sales of certain items. “We couldn’t get fabric in here fast enough when the mask making was a big thing,” she said. Government restrictions also affected the number of people allowed in retail stores.

“We’re allowed one-third capacity, and in our store, one-third capacity puts us at eight people, so we aren’t really restricted in that sense at all. There was the occasional day we had people waiting outside, but that’s not a big deal.”

Adjusting to the new normal for retail operators means offering customized services. “I do offer curbside if people don’t want to come inside,” said Brown. “I also offer mail order, and I get a lot of people who phone in, and I do texts with pictures back and forth. So it’s worked out well that way.”

The ongoing pandemic has caused people to appreciate arts and crafts or similar hobbies. “I definitely saw an increase last year,” she said. “There’s been a few people I’ve seen that tried cross stitch and they kind of got the bug and they kept with it. There were a lot of people who knew they just needed something to do.”

When asked about how she named her store, Brown laughs. “It was a nickname my son gave me that started from a paintball endeavour a few years ago. I thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be fun to take the kids paintballing,’ but little did I know what paintballing entailed.”

Armed with a paintball gun in a dense forest, Brown decided the game wasn’t for her, and she found a tree to hide behind. Time passed, and she won the game by being the last person standing. “They had to search for me for 20 minutes, and they said, ‘You were the craziest person out there.’  And they’ve called me crazy lady ever since.”

Crazy Lady’s Market’s Facebook page has more than 4,000 followers and numerous customers from across Sturgeon County who visit and buy locally as they chat about arts and crafts with the friendly owner. “Whenever we get new inventory in, I photograph everything so people can see what’s new,” said Brown.