By Lisa Morgan
Imagine, if you will, a dreamy Saturday morning, casually strolling with your friends and loved ones underneath the sunlit San Jacinto Mountain in gorgeous downtown Palm Springs, browsing an array of crafty and unique offerings at prices within reach of giving or receiving the perfect gift or enhancing your home or wardrobe all in the outdoor setting and environment that only our beautiful desert can provide. Well wake up and get yourselves downtown! This will now be your reality as the Palm Springs Open Air Market launches this Saturday in the parking lot of the fabulous Spa Resort and Casino at 9 am November 24th.
This much needed networking of businesses promising a boost to our local economy has been over six months in the making and is the brain child of Dawn Cullerne-Bown, business partner Mindy King and their LLC, Uptown Productions. Dawn Cullerne-Bown, a successful European entrepreneur who grew tired of being retired, saw a need for an open air market available to Palm Springs’ weekend traffic and decided to tap into her decade of experience managing successful street fairs in London. With the help of the Spa Casino and the blessing of the “wonderfully accommodating City of Palm Springs Parks and Recreation Department and local government”, Dawn and Mindy have been able to recruit over 100 vendors with 60 vendors waitlisted, and have invested $12,000-$13,000 in marketing supporting not only the future success of the vendors on board, but the local economy as well. Events like this only increase Palm Springs’ draw as a “go to” destination and draw shoppers that will span out to local businesses as well. “It’s a tough economy right now, but I do believe that the economy is going to turn around in the next year or two. Street fairs may be good for the economy right now, when people are short of cash and don’t want to go to the mall and spend a fortune; maybe they do want to go to the street fairs and the local markets and save a little bit of money,” says Cullerne-Bown.
Every time you purchase an item from one of the vendors you receive a raffle ticket for prizes that will be given away throughout the day. These include cash prizes, restaurant certificates, certificates to enjoy features at the hosting Spa Resort and Casino and much more. “English street fairs are very lively, and that is what we are trying to promote in our market. We want to make it entertaining when you come down to our little market” shares Cullerne-Bown. “At the end of the day we just want to give people more business, more money and do it in our own beautiful home town.”
For more information about the Palm Springs Open Air Market visit their website at http://www.palmspringsopenairemarket.com or call (619) 315-3021. The Palm Springs Open Air Market is located in downtown Palm Springs between North Indian Canyon Drive and North Calle Encilia
adjacent to The Spa Resort Casino at 100 N Indian Canyon Drive.
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