Phoebe the Sunday Street Vendor — The crazy adventures of The Oes

Phoebe woke up this morning wanting to go sell stuff. She was working on some scarves yesterday, and had woke up early in the morning to work on a glove. It was 94 degrees outside, so I was tempted to say no. But she had this relentless enthusiasm around selling her goods, so I agreed. We gathered up all the stuff that she's made over the last few months, and brought them to the subway station near us. She set up her spot and started to sell.

Pompom scarves were 50-60NT (that's $1.70 - $2.00USD), jewelry was anywhere from 10-50NT ($0.30 - $1.70USD), coasters 10NT, bags 30NT - 50NT. The glove was 50NT.

She didn't do a lot of marketing around it, although on her way out the door Zoe wrote "Come buy Stuff" in Chinese on a sheet of paper. So Phoebe sat there and hollered "Do you want to buy something?" in Chinese. Not a lot of people stopped at first, but then, someone stopped and asked, "did you MAKE all this?" And then she stared saying "Do you want to buy something? I made it." Then people started stopping to take a look. And it's true, she did make all of this stuff! The first 10 minutes went by a bit slow, but then miraculously she actually started selling stuff. Her first customer was a family with two girls. The younger daughter even tried on the backpack:

Then we had a couple of young guys who bought a bracelet and a pompom scarf. One woman bought a couple of scarves, forcing Phoebe to have to do some addition (one was 60NT and the other was 50NT). The coolest sell was when she saw a Caucasian man walking buy and, instead of hollering in Chinese, she spoke in English. The guy stopped and was a bit incredulous that she made all those scarves. He asked her how long it took her to make the pink pompom scarf, and Phoebe said "about an hour." And he bought it from her!

More customers...

She's adding with her fingers to give her customer the total cost for two scarves.

Even though it was scorching hot, I was surprised she actually sold out of her pompom scarves. That and the jewelry were the most popular. At the end, she sold the backpack. I was hoping she wouldn't, as I really liked the backpack and wanted to use it myself.

One thing I did not expect was the number of customers who wanted to take a photo with her after buying. A couple of them even gave me their business cards, and invited us to lunch.

I also did not expect that a group of folks would joke about buying her. This group of grandparents came by and Phoebe asked them if they wanted to buy something, and they said "No, but we want to eat something. Do you know where we can go?" She shrugged and one guy said, "I want to buy little sister" (referring to Phoebe), "can I buy you?" Phoebe nodded, but then realized she had made a mistake when the other friend joked, "Really?! I'm going to take you home with me." Good thing I was there. They weren't serious, of course. I asked her why she thought they might want to buy her, and she chuckled, "They want to grill me since they're hungry." (Yes, this is the type of humor that Phoebe has, insane).

We sold out most of the goods in less than an hour. I was about to pass out from the heat so I convinced her to leave. She made 470NT, which isn't bad for a five year old.