Busy day at Te Awamutu Annual Craft Fair for stallholders over the weekend

Food court area was popular. Photo / Dean Taylor

The forecast rain on Saturday managed to hold off and shoppers visiting the Te Awamutu Annual Craft Fair even saw the odd bit of sunshine creep out from the grey clouds.

It was a busy day at Selwyn Park with 100 stallholders showcasing their locally made products and thousands of people going through the fair during the day.

Te Awamutu i-Site manager Bea Schiller believed that the fair this year was bigger than last.

"There were several thousands of people on the day, it was quite full at times and definitely very busy," said Bea.

There's no doubt a lot of shopping was done. On the day the i-Site had a cash-out service and to prepare they doubled the amount of cash they would provide from last year's amount. Before the end of the day that money was all gone.

One of four rows of stalls - after the earlier rush. Photo / Dean Taylor

Stallholder, David Botting, was there advertising and promoting his new outdoor games business — Whippet Games.

On show he had a handmade board for a game that is popular in America called Corn Hole and he was overwhelmed by the interest his product was getting.

"I discovered the game in America and I want to really start pushing the game here in New Zealand," said David.

"It was my first time being a part of the fair and I think it went really well. I got around eight orders for boards."

David sells games online at whippetgames.com and has a new game called Kubb coming out in the next week.

Bea said that several other stores did very well with some coming close to selling out of their products.

She thanked Chris Kay, Bill Izard and Te Awamutu Rotary for providing parking marshals, Waipa District Council for upkeep of the park, to workers from the Rose Gardens who provided roses for the tables in the eating area and i-Site staff member Carol Marsh who was the main organiser.

"We got a lot of comments on how well organised the fair was and that all comes down to Carol and the work she put in," said Bea.