Fear's Confections Celebrating 3 Years In Lakewood Saturday

LAKEWOOD, OH — For three years, Fear's Confections has called Madison Avenue home. Cassandra Fear, owner of the business, says creating her Lakewood-based business has been a dream come true. Now she wants to celebrate her company's third Lakewood birthday with a big ole party.

Fear is planning a celebration for Oct. 7 to commemorate three years in Lakewood. Her event will include a scavenger hunt, a Cleveland Craft Coalition market, a psychic reader, a face painter, a balloon artist, live music and a caricature artists. It's the biggest event she's ever planned.

The event will officially kick-off at 11 a.m. on Saturday. The festivities will end at 9 p.m. A full schedule of the events is available at the bottom of this article. (Subscribe to the Patch Lakewood newsletter for local news and updates.)

The journey to Madison Avenue started about a decade ago for Fear. She was once a resident of Lakewood and wanted to open a business in the city, but couldn't find the right time or space. For a while, she worked out of her home. Then she opened a brick-and-mortar location on Cleveland's east side.

"When I was working on the east side, I kept joking around that I wanted to move my business to Lakewood," she tells Patch.

Fear even made the long journey to Lakewood from her east side location to take part in the city's chocolate walk. Participants would approach her and want to know where her store was located. When she said the east side, they looked at her like she was crazy.

She told them she wanted to move her business to Lakewood and that assuaged some of the wide eyes. Little did Fear know that within a year, she would make her dream a reality.

Three years ago, in 2014, a space on Madison Avenue opened up and Fear jumped at it. It was about a year after she first took part in the chocolate walk, fulfilling her promise to bring business to Lakewood.

"It just kind of creepily worked," she says laughing. While Fear says she does miss some of her east side customers, she can't imagine being in any other location. "Lakewood has been such a better fit for us for oodles of reasons. It’s just been awesome. Our customers here are awesome."

Getting Ready to Get Down

Fear's Confections celebration of its Lakewood location will start at 11 a.m. on Saturday, with events staggered throughout the day. Here's the schedule of events according to the event Facebook page:

• Overall Event: 11am-9pm
  • Scavenger Hunt: 11am-6pm
  • Cleveland Craft Coalition Market: Noon-5
  • Joy Wedmedyk, Psychic Reader: Noon-5
  • Jessica, Face Painter: 1pm-5pm
  • Balloon Bender Dave: 2pm-4pm
  • The Sonder Bombs: 3:30pm-?
  • Clarence, Caricature Artist: 5pm-9pm

Fear says the scavenger hunt will send participants into other, nearby businesses. Why divert customers away from her store? To help boost the entire Lakewood small business community.

"We still have people that come in and ask if we just opened. We want to force people to go check out other small shops and bars. It helps drive business to the area and not just to us. We’d like everyone else to do well," she says.

"We’re big small business supporters. We wanted to be able to involve and market other small businesses, while we celebrate ours. We survive if we all survive," she says.

Fear says she has thrown previous celebrations to commemorate her company's Lakewood opening, but none compared to the scope of Saturday's shindig. She's hoping to attract some new customers and bring in some familiar faces for the party.

Learn more about the event, and RSVP, by checking out the Facebook page.

Photos from Rick Uldricks, Patch