IT'S A SMALL SMALL WORLD

Hi everyone, we're back and I am in the mood to reminisce. This business of ours is the best vehicle ever for meeting new friends. You have to be a particular breed to love flea marketing, selling antiques and collectibles and taking just plain old junk and remaking it into something remarkable (even if you are the only one who thinks so). Today I am writing this blog from my own heart.

I have been in this business and working for this type of business for almost ten years, although I did run an auction business in what I call "my other life". You know, the time before my divorce. It is funny how things turn out. In my other life I was also a law clerk/paralegal. My closet was full of conservative business attire. Now I don't own a dress and my current attire is somewhat bohemian like. My hair is usually in two braids and my eyeglasses are bright purple embedded with rhinestones.

I did own one dress until a few years ago. It was black and I wore it for two occasions only. The first was funerals and the second was our annual Victorian Christmas at the store where I used to work in Cookstown. Now anyone who knows me knows two things about me. One, I am very crafty and two I am very absent-minded at the best of times. I like to do all my craftwork while in bed watching TV and it is not unheard of for my life partner Gerry, to wake up glued to the bed where I have inadverently spilled glue and not realized it. It is a standing joke that I do my best work in bed.

This particular year I waited until about 9 p.m. on Friday night before getting my dress out of the cupboard to wear for Victorian Christmas the next day. When I pulled it off the hanger I cried out with dismay. The skirt had been torn off. My first thought was rats (although I had never seen any indication of any varmints in or around my home). I shouted for Gerry who proceeded to look all over the house while telling me there must be some reasonable explanation. He finally walked out of my craft room holding a three foot witch that I had made for Halloween. Very calmly he asked me "Dear, isn't this witches' dress and hat the same fabric as your dress?" I took one look and the memory came flooding back, albeit a little late to save Victorian Christmas. I had, in the course of making my witch, needed some black material. I somehow managed to use my dress for my witch and then after folding it neatly with some other clean clothes, to transfer it onto a hanger and hang it in my closet, ready, or so I thought, for either my next funeral or Victorian Christmas. Needless to say, I was the only non-Victorian for Victorian Christmas that year. Being the ecclectic people most antiquers are my good friends (fellow employees and customers alike) found this whole episode hilarious, although my boss did her very best to transform my everyday clothing into something Victorian-like. I like to think that everyone was laughing with me as opposed to laughing at me.

Well, time goes by fast and soon enough I found myself transplanted from Cookstown to Woodstock. Working at the One of a Kind market I have met a whole new group of friends, each one more eclectic than the last. It is amazing in this business; each place I go I run into old friends. Just this morning we received an e-mail from a vendor inquiring about space at One of a Kind. He identified himself as having a booth at Stratford. Seeing the e-mail address I quickly realized it was a fellow vendor from Cookstown who actually lives in Etobicoke. From Etobicoke to Cookstown to Stratford to Woodstock and here we have the opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with yet another person who has touched our lives since embarking on this business adventure ten years ago. This is not the first time we have encountered old friends on our travels and I am sure it will not be the last.

Now on to another topic. Summer is finally here and without weather issues to cope with we have been enjoying seeing a lot of new faces here at the market. Several of our vendors have sales on right now. We have a great selection of outdoor garden-type things and our furniture selection is growing daily. Of course, we have tons of smalls as well. The market is a wonderful place to lose yourself as you spend hours browsing. We are looking forward to seeing you whether you are an old customer or a friend whom we just haven't met yet.

Until next time

John, Jack and Staff

Well, here we are blogging once again. Seeing as how I have not had time to figure out how to put pictures on this blog, all you soon to be faithful readers are stuck with my writing once more. Today I am going to give you a birds eye view of the people who make One of a Kind Antique Mall truly one of a kind. People have been known to say that we are a very unique group; that is putting it mildly. Jack and John are two brothers; grown but still brotherly in many of their ways (if you get my meaning). They say that some kids never grow up. Well, these two guys have grown up and along with them has grown a successful business as well. They started out very young and inexperienced, with natural smarts and an abundance of confidence. Beginning at a mall kiosk applying transfers, they moved on to the t-shirt manufacturing business and soon found themselves the owners of one of the original "Harvey Woods" factories in Woodstock where they manufactured their own brand "Sun Wear" . Hence the huge Sun Wear sign on the outside of the building. As well as manufacturing their own line of clothing, the brothers also became distributors for Fruit of the Loom. The manufacturing of their own stock came to a timely end but Jack and John continue to be the primary distributor of Fruit of the Loom clothing in Ontario. With a big (and I do mean big) empty factory building and nothing to fill it with, the brothers searched their inner selves and asked what they would like to be doing in ten years. Hence One of a Kind Antiques & Collectibles was born. The factory was quickly renovated with hundreds of booths constructed by these two ultimate DIY's (do it yourselfer's). They started recruiting vendors and were finally able to indulge themselves in all the thrift store shopping they wanted to do. They now had a place to sell everything they could buy. The story of One of a Kind does not end there though. That was only the beginning. One of a Kind has continued to grow and improve. With over 400 booths and a wide range of eclectic vendors, there is not much that you cannot find at One of a Kind.

Staff has come and gone over the years but one clever and oh so tolerant woman has been an anchor for the brothers since almost the beginning of the t-shirt craze. Chris has metamorphasized as needed in order to continue running the Fruit of the Loom distributorship while implementing a system that could accommodate the many vendors as well as customers who have passed through the doors of One of a Kind in the last ten years. All of this while dealing with both Jack and John's idiosyncracies

A year ago Jack and John started noticing Wendy, a new vendor, hanging around the building putting in her two cents whenever she could. After awhile Wendy (aka, myself) talked them into hiring her for occasional work at One of a Kind. One year later I am here to greet and serve the customers every weekend and occasionally during the week when one of the guys (or Chris) takes a much needed break. When I am not busy helping customers I try to keep Jack and John in line. Recently they hired Sharon (another vendor)to help out as needed.

Customers who started shopping at One of a Kind in 2000 still come for the smiling faces and great bargains that they find. New customers are discovering us all the time. The business continues to grow and the customer list gets longer every year. While time does not change some things, other things just keep getting better. One of a Kind is one of these things. We want you, our customers, to like us. Plain and simple. And, oh yeah, don't forget......the coffee pot is always on.

Until next time,

Jack, John and Staff

Hi and welcome everybody to One of A Kind's very first blog. Please bear with us as we learn this new form of communication. First of all, we want to thank all of our old customers and welcome new ones. Having grown so much in the last year and gotten better each time we grew, we now feel that it is time WOODSTOCK'S BEST KEPT SECRET is no longer a secret. We've got the space; we've got the vendors and by golly, we have got the stock.. and stock... and stock....... We are looking forward to each and every one of you visiting our new and improved market. In future blogs we will be talking about all of our events, community events, our market, our staff and you, our customers. For today, our inaugural blog, we want to thank you once again for giving us the chance to be the market we have become - and don't forget, THE COFFEE POT IS ALWAYS ON!

Until next time,

Jack, John and Staff