What a week it’s been for the New England fiber community. If you haven’t been following along, feel free to take a minute (or 30) and read through The Fiber Festival of New England’s social media pages. I have been in shock all week at their announcement and their response (or lack thereof) towards customers and vendors alike.
This week the town of Springfield, MA removed their mask mandate. They had implemented it last month when the COVID cases were rising significantly. Since the program has been so successful (they even only had 100 cases as a vector from the Big E!), they removed it. Because why not shut down a public health program that’s working, right?
In response to this, THE Fiber Festival of New England decided to also remove their mask mandate for the show.
As of this posting, there are over 150 comments on the above post. Mostly from customers voicing their concerns over themselves, their families, and the vendors (thank you so much for thinking of us!). And most people stated their intent not to attend the event due to the removal of the mask mandate.
Instead of addressing their customer’s concerns, The Fiber Festival of New England doubled down and posted this to their social media sites:
As of this writing, the post has 100 comments on it, again, the majority are from people voicing their concerns and stating that they will not be attending due to this change. And, if you go to their Facebook page, you will see over three hundred (as of today) more comments with the same message.
Customers and vendors have also emailed them directly (aginfo@thebige.com if you’d also like to email them directly) about this policy change. The response has been that if we don’t like it, we don’t have to attend. As a business owner, this response doesn’t make any sense to me.
After speaking to some trusted fiber friends, however, I have found out that the message is coming from the fairgrounds themselves who have the final say in these matters and not the fiber festival committee. But, even if the festival’s hands are tied, it’s not the way to speak to vendors or customers. They should have apologized and tried their best to make it right for their customers and vendors.
Even though some vendors have chosen to back out of the show, there are still over 170 vendors still going as of today. I understand the reasoning behind backing out and I hope everyone understands that not all vendors have the financial security to do so. You can find the updated list of vendors on the festival site and they are keeping it updated.
As far as if we will be in attendance – YES, we will be. However, it will be just me and my husband, Matt, running the booth because we do not want to potentially expose any of our staff to COVID.
This has been a tough week watching all of this unfold and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Not only did I need time to process the decision that was made which was not in good faith to the vendors or customers. But, the treatment of those that chose to speak up about it. And, while I do disagree with how it was handled, we have been to a few shows this fall where masks were not required and I have to say that most customers and vendors wore them anyway.
We’ll be masked, we’ll have masks available, hand sanitizer will be out, and I got my COVID booster the other day. I hope that customers still attend and I hope the people attending will take the appropriate precautions to keep everyone safe. And if you choose not to go, I fully support your decision and I hope you will visit our websites and cheer us on from the sidelines.
The vendors still in business after the shutdowns last year really need your support to get through the winter months.
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