We wanted to take a little time after the festival to tell everyone more about who we are, how this festival started, and what this first year meant to us.

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We are a couple living here in the Hudson Valley who made a pretty big decision last year. After nearly 20 years of working in careers that we went to school for, built our lives around, and assumed we would continue doing, we decided to walk away and try something completely different. We wanted to spend our time doing things that actually made us happy and build something of our own.

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The funny thing is, we are actually furniture restorers. We buy old furniture, mostly mid-century modern pieces and antiques, and restore them. We love finding things (ESTATE SALES!!!!) that have been forgotten or overlooked and bringing them back to life. We have ALWAYS loved vintage, small businesses, and people who are willing to take a chance and build something of their own.

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That is really where Vintage in the Hudson Valley Festival started.

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The original plan was MUCH smaller than what happened this weekend. We had been vendors at other events ourselves, and we understood how difficult it could be to spend so much money preparing for a show before you ever sold a single thing. You pay the booth fee, prepare inventory, travel, load everything, unload everything, set up, and then spend the weekend feeling the PRESSURE to make back your expenses before you can actually go home with money in your pocket.

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We wanted to do something different. We wanted to create an event where booth fees were affordable enough that small businesses had an opportunity to succeed, and where vintage dealers, artists, makers, food vendors, musicians, families, and the community could spend a weekend together supporting small businesses.

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Then we found the Ulster County Fairgrounds.

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We were directed there by another fairgrounds, and that is how we met Gary Newkirk. From the beginning, Gary believed in our idea and gave us the opportunity to try something new. He answered what probably felt like a MILLION questions, pointed us in the right direction, and helped us understand everything that goes into bringing thousands of people together for a public event (safe and welcoming to ALL).

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There is absolutely NO WAYYYY this festival would have happened WITHOUT Gary and the Ulster County Agricultural Society believing in two FIRST TIME festival organizers and allowing us to bring this idea to New Paltz. We will ALWAYS be BEYOND grateful for that (teary eyed).

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The truth is, we had NO idea what to expect this weekend. We knew the festival had been heavily promoted. We knew people were sharing it online, buying tickets, and traveling from different parts of New York and other states. But when you have NEVER put on a festival before, there is no previous year to compare anything to.

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This was our first festival. We had put on small indoor shows before, but nothing even remotely close to this, and we learned A LOT.

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From vendor setup and check-in to unloading, parking, traffic flow, signage, festival layout, food service, the Youth Makers Market, and the location of the stage, there are things we already know we want to change. There are systems we need to improve and operations we need to streamline.

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You are not going to get everything perfect the first time you do something this big. We needed this first festival to truly understand what worked, what did not work, and what we need to change to make the next one better.

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This was our rough draft, and we are incredibly proud of it.

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To our vendors, THANK YOU for taking a chance on us. Many of you registered for this festival when all we had was an idea, a website, some graphics, and a promise that we were going to work as HARD as we could to bring people through those gates.

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There were vendors who kept us MENTALLY going throughout the entire weekend (especially moments when we would turn to each other and say "THIS IS SO HARD!!!!!"). From Thursday morning during setup until the final vehicles left on Sunday, there were people checking on us, encouraging us, helping their neighbors, offering solutions, and reminding us that they believed in what we were trying to build.

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You have NO IDEA how much those moments meant to us.

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One of the BIGGEST things we learned this weekend is what kind of festival community we want to continue building. We want vendors who support each other, help their neighbors, understand that everyone is working incredibly hard, and want to see the festival and the small businesses around them succeed. We are excited to welcome back the vendors who brought that support, POSITIVITY (and knowing that this is our first year, we're learning, and it's not going to be perfect the first time around). 

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To our staff and volunteers, we truly could not have done this without you. Just like us, you walked into this weekend not knowing exactly what to expect, and when thousands of people arrived, you worked incredibly hard, stayed flexible, and stepped in wherever you were needed. You did so much more than simply show up and complete the jobs you were assigned. You paid attention to what was happening around you, saw problems that needed to be solved, and took it upon yourselves to move things, change plans, help vendors, direct attendees, answer questions, and make adjustments throughout the weekend to make the experience better for everyone.

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There were long days, early mornings, heat, exhaustion, constant questions, unexpected problems, and moments when everything seemed to be happening at once, and you kept going. Many of you took ownership of this festival as if it were your own, making decisions and finding solutions because you genuinely cared about the vendors, attendees, and the success of what we were trying to build. We saw how HARD you worked, we saw the things you handled without ever needing to be asked, and we will never forget it....Thank you for believing in us, for standing beside us through our first year, and for helping turn an idea into something real. We are incredibly lucky to have had you as part of the beginning.

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To our food vendors, we TRULY do not know how you did it. It is incredibly difficult to prepare food for a first-year festival when nobody knows how many people are going to show up!!! When the crowds came, you adapted. Some of you sent staff members back to your restaurants to cook more food, brought in additional supplies, restocked, and kept serving people throughout the weekend.

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THANK YOU for preparing for the unknown and feeding thousands of people who came to spend the weekend with us.

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We also want to thank SPIE Security for making the safety of everyone at the festival a priority. Because this was a heavily promoted first-year event and we did not know how many people would arrive, safety was one of our BIGGEST concerns. Your team helped us prepare for the unexpected and worked throughout the weekend to help keep our attendees, vendors, musicians, staff, and volunteers safe.

 

To New Paltz Rescue, thank you for the incredible work you did throughout the weekend. EVERY situation that required medical attention was addressed quickly and professionally. Knowing we had experienced EMTs and a paramedic on site who could respond immediately when someone needed help gave us tremendous peace of mind.

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We also need to give a HUGE thank you to Wes and Jeremy from Davis Sound. From the beginning, you welcomed this idea and supported what we were trying to create. You helped us navigate the enormous amount of work that goes into producing live music throughout an entire festival weekend, worked with our musicians, and even brought vintage speakers and equipment that fit perfectly with the festival.

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We already have so many ideas for the music side of the festival next year, from rethinking the stage location and improving the overall layout to continuing to grow the live music experience. We cannot wait to build on what we started together. 

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To our sponsors, THANK YOU for believing in a first-year festival and helping us bring it to life.

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A huge thank you to Sundial Audio, whose involvement went far beyond simply sponsoring the festival. You offered us support, advice, and we are SO excited to work with you as a partner/friend next go. 

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We also want to thank Hudson Valley Credit Union for supporting our inaugural year and being part of the community here in New Paltz. Having local organizations and businesses willing to support a brand-new event means MORE than we can say.

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Thank you to Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger for joining us to help open the first Vintage in the Hudson Valley Festival and for welcoming this new event to Ulster County. We would love to have more events in Ulster County, and we are excited to continue to donate a portion of our proceeds to a local substance abuse treatment facility.

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Thank you to the businesses and community of New Paltz for welcoming thousands of visitors to the area. We had people traveling from throughout the northeast and even as far away as the Southeast to attend this festival. Thank you for welcoming them and allowing us to bring something new to your community.

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And finally, thank you to every single person who came through the gates this weekend. Thank you to those of you who stood in line on Saturday, some for nearly an hour, to show up, support small businesses, and be part of our very first festival. We know Saturday was rough, especially at the entrance, and after seeing where we needed to make changes, we made the decision to open a second ticket booth area on Sunday to help get everyone through the gates faster. Thank you for being patient with us while we learned and made changes in real time, and for being patient with our security team as they worked to make sure everyone entering the festival could do so safely. 

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You showed up to a festival that had never happened before. There were no pictures from previous years, no attendance history, no reviews, and no guarantee of exactly what the weekend was going to look like. You saw an idea for a vintage festival in the Hudson Valley and decided to give us a chance.

You shopped with small businesses, supported vintage dealers, artists, makers, musicians, and food vendors, brought your families, explored New Paltz, and helped turn something that existed only in our heads a year ago into something real.

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Walking away from the careers and lives you know is not easy. We spent years going to school, building careers, and doing what we thought we were supposed to do. Choosing to leave that behind and pursue something completely different was scary, and there were many moments over the past year when we wondered if we were making a huge mistake.

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And then this weekend happened.

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We stood at the Ulster County Fairgrounds and watched THOUSANDS of people walk through the gates of something that, less than a year ago, was simply an idea we only talked about together.

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We will never forget that (teary eyed).

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We know there are things we need to improve. We know there are changes that need to be made, and we are listening. The feedback we receive from attendees, vendors, staff, community partners, and the organizations that helped us produce this festival will be part of how we plan our second year.

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The first year gave us something we could never have gotten from a planning document or spreadsheet. It gave us experience. ​Now we take everything we learned, the relationships we built, the mistakes we made, and the community that formed around this festival, and we start working on what comes next.

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Thank you for believing in our idea, for supporting two people who decided to completely change their lives and try something new, and for being patient with us while we learned.​ Thank you for being part of our first year. We cannot WAIT to show you what we do next.

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With so much gratitude,

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Jackie & Kevin

Organizers, Vintage in the Hudson Valley Festival