CHUBBUCK — Connie Dominguez had to start selling her hand-made holiday wreaths, centerpieces and arrangements at area craft shows once she’d created more of them than she could fit inside her home.
Her husband has lost his garage to a holiday workshop, where she and her sister, Roni Bosquez, work together making fun and festive works of art.
Dominguez and Bosquez both live in Pocatello and sell their creations as partners in a hobby business called Sisters Crafting Garage. They were among the local merchants selling “door busters” made from the heart on Black Friday at a two-day craft and vendor fair at Pine Ridge Mall. The mall’s Holiday Market Vendor Show continued through Saturday.
As a rule of thumb, national retailers celebrate the year’s sales “going into the black” on the day after Thanksgiving.
“We had a fabulous turnout for sure,” Drake Taylor, the mall’s general manager, said of the new event. “Black Friday brings a large crowd to the shopping center, so it’s a great opportunity to bring people together and make the most of this day.”
Dominguez, who also sells spring arrangements, learned to make centerpieces through trial and error. She mastered wreath-making by watching a YouTube video. She sold her wares at her first craft show about a year ago, and she also operates a nail salon from her home, called Classic Nails by Connie.
“We have done shows every weekend for the past seven weeks,” Dominguez said. “It’s not a lot of (income) but it’s fun and exciting.”
Items featuring the Grinch, by Dr. Seuss, are her top sellers.
Bigfoot is the most popular theme of Basquez’s memorabilia. She makes a variety of crafts such as paintings on wood, T-shirts and mugs.
“My husband loves Bigfoot,” Basquez said. “He started making some little things, and he got me into making some Bigfoot things.”
LillyAnn EverDawn, of Pocatello, provided customers braving the mall on the year’s busiest shopping day a sweet treat. She sells an assortment of flavors of homemade divinity candies, such as mint, walnut, pumpkin spice, rum and chocolate. She’s been selling candy for a year and a half at craft shows and other community events. She also sells hand-made quilts, table runners, towel toppers and ornaments.
EverDawn explained candy is her best seller because “almost everybody in Pocatello and the surrounding area knows how to quilt.”
Deleena Foster, of Pocatello, sells her personal designs of necklaces and intricate laser-cut earrings, operating as Rustic Jewelry Box. She often uses balsa wood as her medium for earrings to keep them light. For now, a friend provides her laser-cutting services, but her goal is to eventually buy her own machine.
Kim Byington sells his hand-made toys from Poky Dot Boutique, a business he and his wife run in Old Town. On Black Friday, he brought his creations to the mall. He offered an assortment of bows made of PVC pipe with eraser-tipped arrows, PVC launchers that shoot plastic bottle “rockets” several feet into the air and foam swords with PVC handles, among other toys.
“We’ve been doing this kind of stuff for years,” Byington said.
Elsewhere in the region, parking lots were also bustling at businesses offering more traditional Black Friday deals.
For example, at Barrie’s Ski & Sports, 624 Yellowstone Ave., the staff sold as much merchandise in three hours as the shop normally sells in three weeks, explained owner Barrie Hunt.
Hunt sold some bikes, gloves, snow pants, skis, paddle boards, bindings and snowboards at a loss to get customers through the door.
“It’s called a loss leader. You’re hoping later on to get those people back into the store,” Hunt said. “We have certain things in the store that are loss leaders and certain things that we definitely make money on.”
Hunt said the Black Friday sale also enables him to clear the shop of used equipment in order to bring in new gear for rentals.