“I’ve done shows around the city and just kind of decided to do my own and do something different,” Grandi said.
That’s the Junk Hippy Roadshow, to be held Saturday at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds. She’s been working on it for about a year and a half, and it’s full with 93 vendors. In fact, the show has been full for quite a while now.
“I still have people email me just out of the blue … asking if I’m full, if I have another spot open,” she said. “We have no wholesale or direct-sale items, so everything is handmade and vintage. There’s a lot of refurbished furniture and antiques, just all kinds of unique, retro, anything vintage or funky. It’s not anything like where you can go to market where everybody’s going to have the same stuff in every booth.”
Coming out to support the show means also supporting local businesses.
“I like to support the local mom-and-pop places,” she said. “These people put so much work and soul into what they do, and it’s just neat to find something different, to know that it’s going to someone who really appreciates it.”
Grandi is looking forward to seeing how her first show turns out.
“I’m just excited that we have such a fun group of vendors. They’re all really supportive of each other. There’s a lot of positive energy [going] into it,” Grandi said. “I’m just lucky to have all of them there. I couldn’t have done it with out them.”
After the event’s Oklahoma City debut, Grandi has plans to take the Junk Hippy Roadshow on the road with two shows in Texas: one next month in Amarillo, and possibly in October in Fort Worth.
“This will be the first traveling with my business, so we’ll see how it goes” she said. “It’s exciting! It’ll be fun.”
This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2012.