Starkville's largest pop-up holiday shopping event drew thousands of residents and visitors to the area for the 44th annual Holiday Bazaar this week.
The unique shopping opportunity brought over 90 regional and local vendors to Starkville for the bazaar. Fifteen of the 92 vendors were from Starkville, with the rest traveling from other parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida.
Specific sales totals will be released on Monday, but Greater Starkville Development Partnership Special Events and Projects Coordinator Jennifer Prather said preliminarily sales numbers appear higher than last year's bazaar.
"I know that vendors were very happy with their sales and felt like they were up from last year," Prather said. "I think it was really great. They said they felt like there was a very good crowd on the first day, and that the second day saw people filtering through. The first day was stronger than it was last year."
The event avoided any major problems, and organizers dealt with minor power issues.
"We like for our vendors to have a wide assortment of what they offer, with that comes people that do work on site for personalizing items and offering fresh food," Prather said about the power issues. "We worked it all out and we were good for the rest of the time."
Prather noted that new vendors helped propel the event to even greater heights, mixed with a range of local businesses.
"We were really fortunate this year with having new vendors," Prather said. "It seemed like we had even more handmade items than year's past. We like to have a majority of things be handmade at the bazaar. But at the same time, it's good to have a good blend of storefronts that have booths set up. We need that diversity of our brick and mortar retailers and handcrafted items."
The event helps generate sales tax revenue for the city, and is one of Starkville's largest shopping events hosted each year.
"The unique thing of that is even though you have vendors from all over, they're not taking that sales tax home," Prather said. "They're paying it here in Starkville and Oktibbeha County. We're still creating that economic impact here in Starkville."