Charles County First Annual Home, Health Expo
La Plata, MD – Southern Maryland locals came out to the Charles County fairgrounds for the county’s first annual Family, Health and Home Expo this past weekend, Oct. 29-30. During the expo, guests could visit dozens of booths of a variety vendors.
Health, fashion, food and home service vendors were lined up in rows, offering information, prizes, samples and services to locals.
9Round was one of the health vendors providing information about the kickboxing facility coming to Charles County. 9Round is not open yet, but Wanda Brisco, owner and operator, said they hope to have the fitness facility open in Nov. which will be located on the 2800 block of Crain Highway.
“Once it opens, we’re expecting big crowds because we’ve been getting great responses so far,” Brisco said. She said coming to the expo was the “final big push” before the opening.
Real Time Pain Relief was a health care product available for purchase at the expo, as well. It is a topical lotion, with 18 natural ingredients including menthol as the main ingredient, said Real Time Pain Relief representative, Wayne Brooks, who came out of retirement to promote the product.
“The best thing about the product is that is doesn’t contain any aspirin, any insets, or any ibuprofen, so it doesn’t affect your heart, liver or kidneys,” Brooks said.
Clorissa Fischetti, a nurse practitioner for RediClinic came out to promote and introduce the clinics services to the public. RediClinic is a service that is provided through your local Rite Aid Pharmacy. RediClinics offer acute care and travel health services as an alternate to going to a primary care physician. “One of the main services that we offer is the Weigh Forward program… it’s a 10-week program and you come and see a nurse practitioner every week and have access to a trainer and a nutritionist,” Fischetti said.
Vintage Security Consultant Brian Loveless was on hand to provide sales information for office and home security systems for potential customers. The company’s decision to participate in the expo was mainly to attract more people to home security, and “to get their attention on the crime rates that are happening in our counties and try to protect people’s homes because we’re all about serving the people in our local area,” Loveless said.
There were also several fashion vendors promoting and selling clothes and jewelry. Popular clothing company, Lu La Roe was one of the fashion vendors at the Family, Health and Home Expo. “The cool thing about Lu La Roe is that they only make about 5,000 of each (design) print, and those are spread out though consultants around the country,” said Keenan Woods, independent sales consultant said. “We choose the style and sizes that we order from them, but the prints are a big surprise, when we get them it’s like Christmas morning.”
She came out to the expo to get the clothing in front of people because “once you touch and try on [the clothing], people are sold,” she said.
Food was also a part of the Family, Health and Home expo, including vendor Cabot Creamery, which is a coop of approximately 12,000 dairy farmers in upstate New York, and all New England. In addition, Cabot has three factories located in the Vermont area. Julie Rozankowski, Caboteer for Cabot said their produce is available in most grocery stores, in both the dairy and deli sections.
“We don’t have a huge marketing budget, so we truly believe that if you taste [the cheese] and that we educate you on it, you are going to buy it,” Rozankowski said. She said Cabot’s cheeses are delicious and all natural, gluten free and lactose free. Chef Chuck Moon for Kitchen Craft waterless cookware also gave a presentation to locals, showing them how to easily cook healthy.
The attendance was light and had some vendors concerned; however, some said low attendance was expected because this was the first expo of its kind for the county.
Attendees, Mike and Debra Pickens said they were hoping for more health vendors at the first annual expo. “There’s more home vendors than health vendors,” said Debra. “I was actually more interested in the health side of it… we’ve seen every one of these vendors before, but we were more curious about the health aspects and there was only a couple of them,” Mike said. However, the Pickens’ said they expect next year the expo will grow and provide more health vendors
