First market of 2024

One of my goals for this year was to do more markets. I've slowly been doing a few more the past few years, and they're usually around Christmas time. I feel I've done enough now to feel mostly comfortable (don't get me wrong, it's still a very exhausting day for a socially anxious person like me), so I've started looking for more to do, and as of writing this have four booked over the next few months!

One thing I will say in my quest to find markets to apply for is that Kent, and the South East in general it seems, is absolutely awful for markets. I've seen so many small businesses doing markets every weekend, and there's seems to be so many amazing looking markets in places like Birmingham, Edinburgh etc. I know London has markets, and I'm actually doing one there in July, but they tend to be quite the expense. The curse of living an hour from London. I'd love to do more markets throughout the country, but until I'm more confident that I will get sales, doing markets further afield is quite an investment - you've got stall fee, transport (so petrol and parking or train), hotels and food to think about it and it does all add up!

So my first market was in Bournemouth, so a three hour drive from where I live and it was with Craft and Flea who do markets most weekends all around the country. It was a good market, footfall was good for the first couple of hours, but it did get quite quiet for the last few. Didn't help that it was one of the first warm days we've had this year, and Bournemouth is a seaside town!

I feel like I was pretty happy with the layout. What was great was the stand the cards are on. I bought it from a seller on Etsy and it was great for adding some height to the table as well as being flat packed! I was using a wire display rack before and it was just a bit too bulky to take, and the new one fits perfectly into my boxes of stock (and hopefully a suitcase for one of my next markets 🤞). I've actually bought another one of these stands which I'll probably display some prints on!

What I also did find, and I actually had a fellow vendor come over and ask me about them, is the perfect displays for displaying bookmarks. It's always been a bit of a bugbear of mine to find something suitable, and this is as close as perfect I've found. And they're just clear acrylic nail varnish stands I bought from Amazon!

Anyways, the details that you're really here for.

What did I make in sales?

Well, I took £184, with 24 individual customers purchasing. My stall fee was £55, parking and petrol was about £30, so that left me with a profit of around £100. Not too shabby, but not hugely successful either.

What did I sell? Cards were a bestseller product. I have a 4 for £10 offer, and people seemed to love these. Lower priced items I have noticed do tend to sell more at markets which makes sense because buying smaller items online can be a pain what with the cost of postage these days!

I've got three more markets lined up, one in June, July and August, and I'm hoping to have many more later in the year! And I'll be sure to report back on those too.