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'Second Saturdays' kicks off

The monthly event on Main Street promotes local vendors, shopping.

CLOVIS — A monthly event aimed at promoting local vendors kicked off Saturday on Main Street and hopes to pick up steam every month through September.

The inaugural "Second Saturdays" event near Marshall Middle School showcased crafts, health products, vintage cars, makeup, art, church groups, and face painting from morning till afternoon.

Appropriately titled, the event is scheduled for the second Saturday of every month through September, utilizing parking lot space near Main and Commerce Streets.

The setting was also an occasion for the Chamber of Commerce to welcome two recent enterprises on the site into the business community. Chamber President David Robinson presided over a pair of ribbon cuttings.

"This is a good idea and it is needed for the city of Clovis," Robinson said of the event.

Among those recognized was Lisa Kia, who in the past four months converted a vacant rental property into an event space available for daily or hourly rentals. During Saturday's function, the space served as a vendor hospitality room.

Kia said she and her husband initially converted the location to be a classroom, but it grew from there. Conceiving "Second Saturdays" was soon to follow, with the goal of allowing other local small merchants to convene on a regular basis and market their wares to the public.

"There are a lot of talented people in Clovis who can't necessarily afford to have a booth (at other area events)," she said. "We want to keep things local. Otherwise people pack up on Saturday and go to Lubbock or Amarillo and (spend) their money there."

Kia said her initial pitch for "Second Saturdays" was met with skepticism from the city commission, but her original request also included an hours-long closure of Main Street.. She hopes the event will become robust enough in its trial run to help make her case to the commission in the future.