SEQUIM — The new fashion statement at this year’s Sequim Lavender Festival is a purple product innovation intended to help Rover chill out in these stressful times.
Sequim Lavender Co. featured the Dog Dot Calm Lavender Bandanna at the eighth annual festival’s Lavender Street Fair.
“It’s aroma therapy for your pet,” retired Los Angeles County law officer Paul Jendrucko explained Sunday, holding up one of the colorful, stylish bandannas filled with organic lavender on the Lavender Festival’s final day.
“We have many dog owners who tell us that our product calms their dog down. It makes their dog go calm.”
Sequim Lavender Co. was one of about 150 vendors lining Fir Street during this year’s three-day festival that drew an estimated 30,000 people — about the same attendance as last year’s.
Almost all of the 22,000 lavender entry buttons were sold at $6 each, festival officials said.
Some vendors leave early
First-year festival director, Scott Nagel, estimated that the event generated about $2.5 million in gross sales.
Some vendors sold out Saturday and left early, Nagel said near Sunday’s closing time.
“We’re happy,” Nagel said. “It’s good for a transition year. We’re just ecstatic.
Nagel helped reconnect the Street Fair and valley lavender farms with downtown Sequim retailers, making merchants there much happier than this time last year.
A trolley car ran between the Street Fair and Washington Street downtown, and more formal shuttle buses ran from Swain’s on East Washington Street and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. store on West Washington.
Happy sales
Downtown business leader Melinda McMahan, owner of The Crystal Pedlar on East Washington Street, was not a happy merchant at last year’s Lavender Festival, which moved the Street Fair from West Cedar Street north to Fir Street, leaving the downtown business district out of the business loop.
“Last year, business fell 45 percent below the year before,” McMahan said of her gifts shop.
“This year it is probably 200 percent up from last year.”
McMahan credited Nagel and the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce for working with the downtown merchants.