By Audrey Schwartzberg, Communications Director
During my nearly ten years at ANCA, I have rarely had the occasion to dig into the organization’s vast archives. Digitized materials can be hard to locate and search, while many print documents are surely buried in former staff’s attics and basements, or long ago disposed of.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of ANCA’s Adirondack Buyer Days show, I wanted to learn more about its history. So, with the insight and shared curiosity of ANCA Small Business Program Director Lauren Richard, I turned to the thick three-ring binders that line the shelves of our office hallway.
Lauren has been at ANCA a few years longer than I have, and has been involved in Adirondack Buyer Days for much of her tenure. She has been the main show organizer and contact for hundreds of retail buyers and vendors who have attended the event for most of those 12 or so years.
Flipping through pages of heavy binders, each bulging with printed ANCA newsletters, board meeting minutes, and finance reports — we came across some real gems. Insights into what ANCA was up to in the 1980s, what our main priorities were, and where we saw the most opportunity for sustainable economic development in our 14-county North Country region.
Among the points proposed in ANCA’s “nine-point plan in 1986,” Crafts was an area of focus deemed significant enough to have its own board committee. (The other eight points were Agriculture, Economic Development, Education and Museums, Forestry and Natural Resources, Health and Human Services, Rural Resources, Tourism/Transportation/Recreation, and International Development. Interesting).
At the time, ANCA’s offices were based in Lake Placid, where ANCA operated a retail store in the library of the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. The Adirondack North Country Craft Center marketed products made by local artisans, and as reported in the August 1986 board meeting minutes, “The store has been very successful and to date has grossed over $10,000. There are currently 50-60 crafts people representing the 14 ANCA counties.”
Images: 1990s brochure for the Adirondack North Country Crafts Center in Lake Placid
1986 — it doesn’t really seem so long ago, does it? We’re eating a lot of the same foods, driving similar cars, listening to our favorite 80s songs, and refusing to call them “oldies.”
Credit: raneko via flickr.com
Do you remember what you were doing in 1986?
While two ANCA staff (who shall remain unnamed here) were just entering the world that year, some of us have vivid, lasting memories of that era.
It was the year of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union and the explosion of the Challenger shuttle over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Ronald Reagan was the 40th U.S. president, and we observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the first time in our country that year. Top box office movies included Top Gun and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while Madonna, Bon Jovi, and The Beastie Boys topped the charts. On T.V., we were watching The Cosby Show, Cheers, and The Smurfs, and the Oprah Winfrey Show entered the daytime talk show scene. Walkmans, VCRs and mixtapes were the technologies of the day, while desktop computers were expanding beyond tech-savvy hobbyists and entering more homes and businesses. There was no internet.
It was in this setting that Adirondack Buyer Days (with a slightly different name) was born.
Described two years later in ANCA’s February 1988 newsletter: “The 3rd Annual Buyer’s Day will be held at Howard Johnson Motor Lodge [in Lake Placid] on March 12, 1989. The event provides area crafts producers with an opportunity to market their wholesale product lines.”
Later that fall, at its October board meeting, the show’s success was apparent: “Buyer’s Day has successfully run for 2 years now and in 1989 will need a much bigger place.”
Images: ANCA’s 1988 Annual Report featured our original logo (!) and our 2nd annual “Buyer’s Day” as a highlight that year.
And, so, alongside other ANCA programs designed to support craft businesses, the trade show grew to help more artisan entrepreneurs gain valuable wholesaling skills and experience, connect with other business owners, and share their products and talents with retail shops and consumers across the region.
Forty years later, Adirondack Buyer Days is still going strong. Some of the vendors and buyers who attended that first show in 1986 still come — now traveling to Saratoga Springs, where they are joined by new and returning vendors, experienced and budding entrepreneurs, and retailers who are invested in supporting local makers and sourcing local products for their customers.
In ANCA’s nearly 75-year history, empowering people, businesses and communities has been at the core of ANCA’s mission. Even as our “points” and “pillars” have changed over the years, we have continually paid attention to the needs of our rural region and offered opportunities for our constituents to connect, learn and grow.
Lauren and I, and all of our colleagues here at ANCA, are honored to be a part of this legacy.
Like our predecessors wrote in a brochure about ANCA’s work all those years ago, “The Adirondack North Country has a certain magic about it, and that magic is expressed in the fine-quality, handcrafted items that are produced in our 14 counties.” We are grateful for the ANCA community whose support uplifts and empowers the small businesses that bring so much creativity and vitality to our region.
Retail buyers, we hope you’ll join us in celebrating 40 years of Adirondack Buyer Days on March 23 and 24 in Saratoga Springs — and be a part of a long tradition of cultivating our region’s craft economy.
Learn more and register for the 2026 show at bit.ly/adkbd.