Tips for Vending at Market for the Strange

New Vendor Tips

We're always excited to have new vendors join our community. Occasionally we get asked about what steps a new vendor can take to prepare for a market like ours. Yamen and Kari share over a decade of vending experience, so here's our guide to make sure you have the essentials covered, and give you a few tips about h0w to handle things on the day of the event. This advice should be useful for most art and vendor markets.

Business Basics

Tables and Chairs
The most fundamental part of your booth is the table you set up on, and the seat you rest in. At some events, tables and chairs are provided. At Market for the Strange our vendors have such diverse booth layouts, so you should bring your own table and chairs. If that's a challenge for you, please reach out to us, some of our venues have furniture we can borrow or rent for vendors, but we need to arrange that at least a few days before the event.

Ways to get Paid
While we occasionally have vendors that get by running cash-only booths, most of our customers use cards. While a fancy POS device or checkout tablet can be a nice touch, plenty of vendors do just fine with a small card-reader attached to their phones. If your phone is your sales device, consider bringing a backup battery for it.

A Little Change
If you take cash, you need to plan to give change. Knowing how much change to bring when you're getting started can be tricky, but try this estimation technique. Imagine what you think your most common sale will be, whether that's an individual product or a bundle. Round up to the nearest $20. The amount that you rounded up is your most popular change amount. Bring 3x-5x that amount, in various denominations.

Cells and Signals
Some of our venues provide wi-fi for vendors, some don't. We'll always share any wi-fi info on the day of our event in our Vendor Only channel on our Discord. But sometimes we don't have that info, and sometimes the wi-fi gets bogged down with so many visitors and vendors. Having a backup data connection, such as a wi-fi hotspot on your phone, can be key to keeping your payment process working. When you get to the point of purchasing a fancy POS terminal, make sure to get one with its own cell connection and data plan.

Cards and Codes
Customers will ask you for a business card, website, or social profile. Telling them a web address is mediocre, pointing them to a QR code is better, handing them a business card is best. You'll be surprised how often a business card brings someone back around to you, months or years later.

If you use a QR code, make sure to use a generator that only encodes your web address, like this one. You don't want to send your visitors through a sleazy third-party clickfarm on their way to your site.

Bio Basics

Hydration is a must!
When you include setup and teardown, our markets are an 8+ hour commitment. You will need to stay hydrated, especially if you want to keep your voice fresh for the customers who show up later on. Bring a water bottle. Most of our venues have water stations or fountains for easy refills.

What's for Lunch?
We strive to have food trucks at each of our events, but sometimes we can't line one up, or we have last minute cancellation. It's wise to have a backup plan. When we're near downtown, there are several good options within walking distance. But the most reliable and convenient lunch is the one you bring with you.

Chill Out
Especially during summer months, heat can be an issue. We only do events in places with AC, but when a whole vendor hall fills up with people, things can still get a bit warm. A portable, battery-powered fan can go a long way to keeping you comfortable, and they often double as a backup battery for your phone/POS device.

Pro tips for Presentation

When it comes to putting together an impressive booth, there's a lot to consider. It can take some time to collect and refine the right set of display hardware for your booth. We don't expect new vendors to have perfect booths, but these tips are meant to help vendors looking to grow their booths into more spectacular displays.

Signs and Banners
Your name is the cornerstone of how customers and visitors will remember you. Whether you use a brand name, your own name, or something else, it's good to make sure visitors know who you are with some kind of sign or banner. If they can see that name before they get close enough to see your products, even better!

Vertical Displays
Laying out your products flat on a table is a fine way to start. But it requires visitors to walk up to the table to see what you have. Tiered shelves, vertical surfaces, and other hardware that give your booth a "stadium seating" kind of layout goes a long way to catching attention from the isles, and give you more space to show off.

Table Cloths and Covers
Table covers and cloths serve two purposes. The first is giving you a uniform, professional surface to display your work on. The second is covering the space under the table so you have a tidy place to store your bins and boxes during the event. Make sure to match your table cover to your table size.

Consider Load Times
At our events, we typically have 3 hours for load-in and setup, and 2 hours for pack down and load-out. That includes navigating around everyone, finding parking, waiting for a cart to be available, etc. If your setup involves significant hardware, shelf assembly, or other time-intensive elements, think about where you can streamline and reduce. The fewer trips to your vehicle, the smoother the process is and the sooner you get to go home at the end of the day.

Interactions and Interludes

Visitors Seek Creative Passion
The big secret to an art market is that the people who come to shop are looking for reasons to be excited about what they see. They aren't just looking for a new decoration or a new accessory, they want to meet the people making those things and support the creative people in their community. That makes markets like ours the perfect place to get nerdy about what you do, to talk about your motivations, your fascinations, your story and your craft. Genuine passion grabs attention far better than sales gimmicks.

Downtime
Even at a very busy market, you'll find times where you're just waiting at your booth for the next visitor to approach. When these lulls come along, it's a great time to munch on a snack, refill your water bottle, and relax a bit in your chair. When you're done taking care of yourself, be mindful of what you do to pass the time. Visitors will walk right by a booth if the vendor is busy scrolling on their phone or lost in a book. When you're ready to attract more visitors, simple actions like smiling, bobbing your head along with the music, and greeting passerbys are great invitations. When you look like you're having a good time, people will come up to be a part of it.

Please Don't Tear Down Early
As a market winds down, some vendors get tempted to start tearing down their displays early to get a head start on packing up. Unfortunately, this signals to any remaining customers that the market is over, and sometimes sets off a chain reaction. We ask our vendors to stick it out until the closing time out of respect for the rest of our vendors. In the uncommon situation where our visitors totally disappear, we will poll vendors and announce early closures when appropriate.

Occasionally, vendors completely sell out of their products. When this happens, we will give them permission to break down early and exit during a slower moment. This is not a signal for everyone to tear down. When you have a question about this, find Kari, Yamen, or one of our helpers to find out if there's been an early closing announcement.

Vendor Trades are Welcome!
Downtime towards the end of a market is a great opportunity to walk around, check out other vendors' booths, and most importantly, do vendor trades! Our market has a long tradition of vendors trading works at the end of the event, it's a great way to connect and bring home something cool.

Before You Go, Peel Some Tape?
This is not a requirement, just a request. As you pack up your space, please consider pulling up the tape markers in the corners of your booth. Our crew often spends 30+ minutes peeling tape at the end of the day, but it goes way faster when vendors pitch in just a little bit.