Holiday Bazaar

By: Russ | Published: December 14, 2009 | Filed under: Events, Networking

Sunshine’s Senior Office Manager, Caitlin McConnell, on the upcoming Sunshine Holiday Bazaar. Sunshine Suites gives entrepreneurs unique opportunities that other real estate companies don’t provide-as we license the rights to our space for client use, we do not use the term “tenant”. Rather, our community members are Shiner, as we have defined that as someone who takes space with us. This is a more fitting phrase because what we are trying to create at Sunshine is a community of people who work together, sharing resources and opportunities. To aid us in this mission we provide a variety of unique services that make our space more intimate and help to foster community attitudes. Some of these include trips to the company Vermont home, community-wide social networking via Yammer, events, and sports teams. This past year though we have been very focused on increasing the amount and quality of our events to ensure that our community members are getting the most out of them.In September we hosted the first annual Sunshine Market, which was geared towards companies that had physical goods to showcase and sell, although we did not limit who participated. We felt it was necessary to fill a void for those who may not have been benefiting from our more conventional types of networking events, where software companies may make connections with good accountants, or get referrals for new programmers, or get legal advice. Many of our industries are more regular in the sense that their finished product isn’t tangible, because they are providing services. When we realized that we had been leaving out a portion of our community, we were motivated to see what we could do to not only to find out who and what these brands were, but how we could get them mingling with others like them, and potentially help them find a market for their goods right here in our own community.A “flea market” was our first thought, an event where people could sell their stuff-a very basic idea. We decided on calling it the Sunshine Market in fear of the negative connotation that might come with “flea market”. We sought out those companies who would participate as vendors and we quite surprised with what we came up with. Many of our clients were interested but it was the same population we had already been working with, because most of the companies who had items to show and sell were doing these second to their primary work. It was interesting to see this side of our Shiners: Iphone/computer cases, a woman in finance who did a designer sample sales on the side, jewelry designers, a marketing agency that owned a home goods store in Soho.We wanted to shared the opportunity with our neighbors and partners, in addition to hosting the event in our space and providing the marketing and advertising for those acting as vendors. We also welcomed Vestry wines, Fresh Direct, and Cork’d. We bought wines from Vestry, and in return they came to the event and did a wine tasting and discussion for attendees, as Cork’d registered new users to their site and had them rank the provided wines. FreshDirect offered samples of their 4-minute meals throughout the evening.At Sunshine, we feel that if we create and nurture a climate of sharing ideas and providing business to one another it will help ensure success for those who are part of our community. So we’re excited to be hosting a second Sunshine Bazaar, this time a “holiday market”, on Dec 17 at our Tribeca location (12 Desbrosses ST) from 5-9 PM. We invite any and all to join us as we open our Sunshine community to everyone to celebrate the holidays.