We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jennifer Atkison. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jennifer below.

Jennifer , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I am a childhood bone cancer survivor, a mom and wife. I suffer from chronic pain due to many surgeries and long term side effects of chemo. I am disabled, but wanted to do something to help with finances, so I started doing home parties and DS sales. I have sold pretty much everything, from skincare, bath and body, jewelry, clothing and more. When I would pay to be at a vendor event, I paid attention. I went to some successful events and many that I didn’t make my table back.

I was given the opportunity to take over an existing event company and then she gave it to someone else. I decided to continue to do the new owners events, but they were not successful. I reached out and offered my opinion on how I think they could be better and she told me it was her sister and her’s business and if I didn’t like how they did things, I could start me own. Well that is exactly what I did and am here going on 7 years later. They are not.

There are many event coordinators who only care about the money, since I started out as a vendor, I take everything to heart. I strive to reach as many people as we can for each event. I change them up with different themes, entertainment, different vendors. They are free for the community to attend. I work hard to support the small businesses and hobbiest to get their names our there, to have success and sales.

It is defintley a lot more work than I anticipated and couldn’t do it without my husband, 2 daughters and amazing team of volunteers that help me out. We have amazing loyal vendors and continue to grow each year. We even won two 2023 Reader Choice Awards from the Hometown News and I am so beyond grateful for that recognition.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I know I answered some of this in the first question. Sorry

I think the fact that I was and still am a vendor makes a huge difference with For the Love of Shopping Events. I am fair with vendor pricing, I know what it feels like to pay for an event and not make my booth back. I understand what it takes to get the event noticed, the vendors. To bring excitement. It has definitley been a learning experience. My first event was on a week night on the coldest night of the year. It was a flop. We had maybe 35 people come with probably 40 vendors and I still have vendors from that day who do events with us. Who have watched us grow each year. It is such a honor to have them grow with us each year.

I started very small at small venues and then I started to try bigger venues. The first couple years were trial and error. I listened to the feedback from guests and vendors. It is not always what someone wants to hear, but it did help me to make changes and to not give up. Our biggest event, our Annual Mermaids & Pirates & Seafood, Oh my! now has an attendance of 7000. Such a diffference from the first event. LOL

I am proud of the friendships I have made with not only vendors but with attendees. We have so many who follow us and come to all or most of our events. It means the world to me when they come over and say hello, let me know what they think of that event and how excited they are for For the Love of Shopping.

I am glad that I have shown my girls that even though you think you can’t do something for any reason, you can. I live in a body that has been through so much in life and I keep going. I beat cancer, I fall from my unstable knee, I could sit all day long and feel sorry for myself, but I want to be an example to not give up. No matter what life hands you, you can find a way to be a positive example to others.

FTLOS, as I call it, now has the reputation of being extremely organized, that we want the vendors to be successful and want to give to the community. To offer events that are fun for the whole family. Get families out together to make memories and find some one of a kind finds while doing it. Eat some yummy food from our food trucks. Take some photos with Santa or our Mermaids and Pirates. Ride on a pony. Whatever the entertaiment may be at that event.

We strive to have events different from the others. Though we deal with copycats, I feel that people will come to For the Love of Shopping events because they know we care, we have a fantastic selection of vendors, artisans, crafters and local businesses and that we will continue to grow and be different.

If you don’t try more each year, change, listen and want to do better, then you won’t.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social Media is so important when building a business. It can reach so many perspective vendors and attendees. Facebook is not the only platform one should be using to get thier business out there. Whether a vendor, small business, events. We started only sharing on Facebook and now use youtube, instagram, we have our own website, send out newsletters and more. We also put many events in the local papers. Our biggest request to our vendors is to also post, post on their pages, share to the many platforms, post directly to the event page and more. We work hard to share the events, but by each vendor posting and sharing too it will reach thousands more that we may not reach just doing it ourselves.
If you own a business, want to sell something you cannot expect someone else to do it for you. You have to put in the work also. We ask each vendor to try to get at least 10 people to come to each event. If they accomplish that all events will be successful. If you have an event with 50 plus vendors that is a guarenteed 500 plus guests just by the vendors alone. Prior to all the advertsing.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the most difficult things I have had to unlearn is that I cannot please everyone. I have always been a giver, been someone who wants to make everyone happy. I learned quite quickly that that is not possible. There are people who no matter what you do will always be upset about something. I used to and still try hard not to take everything to heart.

Being kind and trusting is hard in the event industry. It still blows my mind that there are other event companies that want to see you gone. It started with the one who got me into the business who said to do it myself and when I did she told people that she was going to detroy me.

I am not going anywhere and would still love to see everyone with a smile on thier faces.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fortheloveofshopping.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fortheloveofshoppingfl/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FTLOSFL
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ftlosfl

Image Credits
Photos taken by Jennifer Atkison