Last November’s first Akron Bazaar went so well that founder Shannon Okey is planning to make the long-running Cleveland indie craft show a permanent fixture here.
The two-day market featured 100 vendors and took place at Bounce Innovation Hub and the now-shuttered R. Shea Brewing at Canal Place. Okey said the event went “surprisingly well for as little time as we had to prepare.” (More on that in a minute.)
Akron Bazaar will host 10 markets this year at 159 S. Main St. in downtown. The first market is Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Many of the Akron Bazaar markets coincide with popular downtown events, such as Akron Pride Festival, Summit Artspace’s ArtWalk and the Welcome Santa Parade. (Here’s the complete 2024 Akron Bazaar schedule.)
“I don’t like that Akron gets treated as sort of a secondary market. I think it deserves its own [handmade show],” Okey said. “It’s not little Cleveland. It’s its own thing.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Dominic Caruso, the communications director for Downtown Akron Partnership, who said that Akron in particular has a strong community of makers. Caruso said he thinks the city’s downtown is a good backdrop for such events.
“There’s just a lot of connections that can be made downtown that you can’t really get elsewhere,” he said.
End of Crafty Mart leads to new opportunities
Okey launched Akron Bazaar to fill the hole left by the departure of Crafty Mart, the long-running Akron handmade market.
By October 2023, Okey knew things were not going well for Crafty Mart, which launched in 2009. Organizers had canceled the spring show last April and had a lackluster Halloween show, according to accounts from vendors who participated.
In an Instagram post from April 19, 2023, announcing the cancellation of its spring show, Crafty Mart said, “Out of an abundance of respect for the current situation in Akron, given the grand jury verdict in the Jayland Walker case, we do not want to take away from or make light of what is happening and the countless individuals affected by this verdict. Because of that, we made the difficult decision to cancel Crafty Mart’s Spring Fling market that was set for this Saturday.” (The grand jury decision clearing eight police officers in Walker’s shooting death came down earlier that week.)
As she watched all of this unfold, Okey started planning a 2024 holiday show in Akron. But then Crafty Mart canceled its 2023 holiday market, which was originally scheduled for Nov. 25 and 26. Suddenly, 50 vendors had no place to sell their handmade wares during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.
Okey quickly realized she needed to move her Akron plans up a year. By Oct. 13, the day after Crafty Mart announced its cancellation, Okey had an Akron holiday show planned for November — and it was double the size of Crafty Mart’s canceled market.
“It was wild how fast Shannon fixed the problem after Crafty Mart was like, ‘We can’t do it because it’s hard,’” said Mary Clark, an Akron resident who owns Tiny Cloud Ceramics, and was one of the 50 vendors originally selected to participate in Crafty Mart’s holiday show. “Then Shannon said, ‘Actually, you could’ve.’”
Crafty Mart cites lack of space, staff turnover for cancellation
The Crafty Mart board said in an announcement on its website it canceled the holiday show “based on the combination of many circumstances that we feel can’t be overcome,” including “hosting our event on a smaller scale, and with fewer vendors, due to renovations at our Carbon Black home in Bounce Innovation Hub.” (The 2022 Crafty Mart holiday show at Bounce had 80 vendors.)
In an Akron Beacon Journal article from October, Crafty Mart board member Kathy Folkerth cited recent staff and board member turnovers as another reason they decided to cancel the holiday show.
Judging by many of the 133 comments on Crafty Mart’s Facebook page, where the announcement was also posted, those explanations did not sit well with many people. Clark said she and others would have stepped up to ensure the show happened if organizers had asked for help.
“Basically, I was pissed,” Clark said. “Everybody was mad. And just reading their explanation did not seem like enough based on how much people really cared about the show.”
In response to an interview request in February, the Crafty Mart board said via email, “Crafty Mart is actively working on the future path of the organization and we hope to have an announcement to the community soon. In the meantime, we are not in a position to discuss the plans that are in process but are not yet solidified.”
Subsequent emails to the board went unanswered.
Success built on community
When asked how she pulled a show together so quickly after Crafty Mart’s cancellation, Okey was matter of fact: “I literally called the building next door and later that afternoon the other building and booked it,” she said.
With Crafty Mart out, there was still room at Bounce for a show, so Okey reserved that spot. Then she called nearby R. Shea Brewing and reserved space there, too. This meant everyone who originally had a spot at Crafty Mart now had a show back on their calendars. And with more space, Okey was able to bring in more vendors.
“We know all of these people,” Okey said. “We couldn’t just stand by and watch them completely lose a weekend of their heaviest traffic of the year.”
Now, as Okey prepares to launch a new market — and celebrate 20 years of the Cleveland Bazaar — she has more on her plate than ever. But she isn’t too worried. After all, she has quite a few people in her corner.
“There’s a big community behind the scenes supporting each other and helping each other’s businesses grow,” Okey said. “So it’s its own self-sustaining community of people and creatives doing the things that they want to do, which I think is great.”
