Not very long ago I did something very exciting, I (proudly) held a stall at my very first market, the Belle Bazaar Twilight Markets and on December 10th I will be doing it all again at the brisStyle Indie Designers markets!
What a day! I was a little overwhelmed by it all, the weeks of hard work and preparation leading up to the event, the nerves on the day and finally the excitement of the market. I thought I might share a few of the lessons I learnt along the way.
- Take the time to plan in the lead up to your market, I had an ongoing pre market check list that I was double checking right up to the last minute, and it worked, I only forgot one thing!
- Get to the market early, take your time setting up, I was ready about half an hour before the event started this gave me plenty of time to relax, have a walk around, go to the loo, all that stuff and to be ready greet my first customers with a relaxed smile.
- If you’re a newbie like me, talk to the other stall holders, I learnt heaps, like what to expect over the Christmas period, how to improve my stall set up and how to hire an eftpos machine, and of course I met loads of great people!
- Market goers are interested in your creative process; as I am a lino print maker I brought along one of my carved lino’s to show people. I found it really helped me to connect; everyone seemed to remember doing lino prints at school this was a great conversation starter.
- Bring some work along with you, all the market tips I read advised that you need to be ‘present’ and greet your customers, while this is great advice; I found that people were more comfortable browsing at my stall while I worked on my craft and chatted with people at the same time. As a bonus I got a bit of extra work done!
- Observe the way customers interact with your stall this will help you to improve the layout for next time. I found that people didn’t look up behind me (where I had hung some of my cards) and many people were shy about looking through the open box of cards I had on my table. On the positive side, I noticed that the prints I displayed on my easel attracted the attention of possible customers from across the room.
- Smile and enjoy the experience, be proud of yourself for all the hard work you did to get there in the first place!
What have you learnt from your market adventures? I would love to learn from you too…
