We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Meg Stroh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Meg below.
Meg, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.
We are just a small entertainment venue with a consignment shop full of local vendors’ handcrafted items. But our environment is one that is all-inclusive and accepting. We attract a diverse audience, with a range of ages, races, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identities. And everyone feels valuable and safe in our space. Recently, we answered their cry for more LGBTQIA+ targeted events and hosted our very first drag show. It was a hit! We are hosting our second drag show this month and hosting a PRIDE event in June. Since announcing these 2 events, we have received a lot of backlash from the community. There is a petition circulating local businesses and churches to have our events shut down and illegalized and a pastor spoke against us during our last city council meeting.
I will be giving our response at our next meeting and I have connected with activists all over Alabama to make sure we are supported and their baseless intentions to shut us down are not met.
Meg, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My husband and I are both very artsy and creative people and we struggled to find others like us in our mundane, day-to-day lives. In our small community, we lacked places to go and hang out and meet like-minded people. So we started our business as an attempt to give other creators and artists a space to display and sell their items, as well as to hang out and create! We host events like Open Mic Nights, live music, drag shows, Art workshops, and show and tell for an outlet for artists and performers to showcase their talent and let loose and enjoy themselves and feel safe and represented.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
We opened in July 2021 with the idea that we would be a market for vendors to sell their handcrafted items and we would occasionally host events like paint ‘n’ sips. However, after 6 months of being opened, our market got almost not attention and our events kept filling up. So in January 2022, we completely revamped our business model, rearranged our 3000 sq ft space, and decided to go full entertainment. It was a massive shift. We were shut down for almost 2 full months. We’re still waiting to see if the change will pay off!
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
Yes! We couldn’t survive without multiple revenue streams. We have our entertainment stuff, which is different every week. We rely on both cover charges and drink purchases to make a profit. We also make and sell our own items, such as key chains, miniatures, stickers, buttons, and paintings. We also recently invested in becoming a distributor of Games Workshop, so we sell Warhammer game supplies and Citadel painting supplies. And we have a consignment shop where we display other people’s hand-crafted items. They display their items for free, but when it sells, we keep a percentage. And we recently accepted an ATM machine and will be getting a quarter pool table, as well. Lastly. we will occasionally set up at street festivals with a booth to sell items made by us and others, and we list items online. We do a lot! And it takes every single one of these things to keep the lights on! 
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigbrickmarket/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/bigbrickmarket
- Other: @BigBrickMarket on TikTok
Image Credits
Meg Stroh