MADAWASKA, Maine – Parking quickly filled up and guests started parking down the road from Madawaska’s Multi-Purpose center as the town’s Top O’ Maine Trade Show kicked off on Saturday morning.
It is the largest trade show north of Bangor, and this year it drew in guests from Maine and beyond, including some from Boston and Rhode Island. The event, which is now in its 37th year, was organized primarily by the St. John Valley Chamber of Commerce, which has been short-staffed since its director resigned at the end of last year.
Chamber Vice President Brian Bouley, who also works for the Red Cross as one of the agency’s only contacts in the region, said he and the rest of the board pulled together and worked late nights and weekends to ensure that the town would have another successful trade show.
“We’ve been working a lot behind the scenes to get this year’s show on the road without an executive director, which is a lot of work considering everybody has their full-time job,” Bouley said. “But we pulled it off.”
He said that while there were stressful moments arranging everything, seeing the vendors and guests happy on Saturday morning made it all worth it.
Bouley said most guests are just relieved that the trade show is still going. Looking ahead, the chamber is preparing to interview a few applicants for the executive director position. He said the organization is hoping to have someone hired within the next two months, at which point the next trade show will be much easier to organize.
All 120 vendor booths were sold out before the show. The trade show had a total of 75 vendors, many of which rented multiple booths to fit more materials.
He said the chamber expects about 2,000 guests to come through today, which is the show’s biggest day.
Vendors offered plenty of products and services, from archery, crafts, and clothing, to food, home renovation, and jewelry.
SNC Homemade Jewelry, Gifts & More, owned by Sandy Caron, featured a plethora of items, from necklaces, coffee mugs, knitted materials, signs with fun slogans, and jelly roll rugs.
Caron first started making jewelry about 10 years ago, and has had a brick and mortar store in Madawaska for the past six years.
“I’m making new things all the time,” she said. “I try to make unique things that we don’t find around here.”
She said she makes different products at different times of year, such as Christmas ornaments during the winter months.
Caron has been coming to the trade show for the past eight years, and said it is always a big help for her business.
“It’s one of my best weekends,” she said. “There’s a lot of different people that come out. I hand out my business cards and they get to know where my shop is. It’s great.”
Honest Sister Apparel, which also has a physical location in Madawaska, offered a variety of clothes for both women and men at the trade show. Cai Bouley, who works at the store, tended the booth while business owner Jenney Dionne was away.
Bouley said that Dionne, who is also a member of the town’s select board, saw that the business (formerly known as Davis Clothing & Footwear) was about to close, and decided to buy it and rebrand to ensure that it could continue.
“She did not want to see a clothing business go away, and Davis was going to retire, so she bought it,” Bouley said.
Bouley said the shop covers formal and casual clothes and shoes, and even does suits and dresses for proms and weddings.
She said this is the first time the business had made a showing at the trade show, and that everything has been going well.
“It’s actually been doing pretty well,” Bouley said. “It’s attracting people.”
Jackson Musgrave’s booth featured a unique combination of two businesses. One is MMB Trees, based in Cyr Plantation, which is a wholesale Christmas tree farm that offers tree transplants that are ready to plant. The other business, DBZ Figurines, featured a myriad of products related to the popular Japanese anime and manga franchise “Dragon Ball,” from figurines and keychains to trading cards.
Musgrave said MMB Trees is a multi-generational business. And he was inspired to start the figurine business after seeing how successful it was during a recent trip to Mexico.
“It’s huge down there because it’s actually one of the only cartoons that was on their public channels, a lot of Mexicans grew up watching Dragon Ball Z after school,” he said. “When I was down there, I noticed a lot of stores selling figurines.”
From there, he soon opened his own figurine shop. He found out about the trade show through a Facebook group about Van Buren’s revitalization efforts.
“This is my first time coming to the Madawaska trade show, but it won’t be my last time,” he said. “It’s a fun time here, and it’s right down the road for me.
