On Sunday 29th July I thought about how I'd love to one day host my own market.
On Sunday 4th August we hosted our first ever market, a week later.
Here's how and why I pulled that off!
It's no secret that I'm a market girlie. I've been trading at them for a long time now and I love the trader life.
However over the last few years I've started to fall out of love with them. And so had my peers.
I had always thought that it would be lovely to start hosting our my markets where I can promote a supportive community environment for our traders and a more fun and relaxed experience for our visitors. And so I decided sod it, I'm going to do just that.
Because I am entirely sane and rational I set a trial date for one week out to see what we could do.
First thing's first, the venue. We've got one of those! Our first one was just going to be small so we could do this at The Clubhouse right? A whole market inside a 20ft shipping container? Maybe not. So we went round the corner to enlist the help of our pals at Good Thing Coffee. Good Thing Coffee has been our neighbourhood cafe and vibe spot since last year and the guys there have been working hard at creating more of a community here at Pollard Yard. They are always keen to put on great events that bring good folk in so where so keen to get involved. We got our gazebo permission and we were ready to start organising this event!
Next it's a sweet trader line up. In order to create the type of event I had envisioned I needed some bloody good market folk! I wanted a strong theme throughout, with traders that complimented each other and had high standard goods ... but I also had 6 days to sort this. I realised there was only one obvious option: It had to be a Vintage Fayre. J at Negative Development and I are vintage business folk and I had every confidence I could find some great additions to our jewellery and film cameras. So I opened Instagram for some inspiration (or maybe to procrastinate I'm not sure) and there it was staring right at me, a suggested account with multiple mutuals, BWS Vintage. Some things are just meant to be right? I trusted fate and decided to drop this stranger a message. Couldn't have got it more right. Turns out BWS Vintage have a gorgeous collection of beaut premium vintage pieces at beaut prices. And Sam the guy that runs it? Bloody lovely. They took a chance on a stranger dropping a random instagram message and I am so grateful for their trust, it was great to have them at the event. With Sam on board I knew I needed one more gem to complete the line up and my mind instantly went to Alicia. We are good friends that go way back, I got Alicia her first job in jewellery around 10 years ago and now she's starting out on her own in the vintage world with some fab homeware and fashion, all with a western twist. Boom. Traders sorted!
We needed to create that fun atmosphere I wanted at markets. It was my pal Cara that came to save the day there. Context: Cara has one of the biggest collections of retro gaming paraphernalia in the UK. They often visit The Clubhouse with different fun bits to show us, and as we were playing with our gameboy colour printer and camera set up I asked if they would like to maybe set up a gaming station at the event to share their collection. It took some minor convincing that loosing some of their saved games would be okay but Cara was keen and our retro games station was born.
On the Friday before I was going over music details for the day. Good Thing Coffee offered me the use of their decks and we talked about how great a record trader would be at the event to put on some tunes too. Something to find for next time as there definitely wasn't time for that before Sunday. Not 30 minuted later I happened to bump into the lovely Etienne from Haunted Dancehall - a local record shop! We got chatting and before I knew it we had a record seller and DJ sorted just 2 days out from the Fayre.
Now to get the right people down. We had a week with no marketing budget so I did what any other loud mouthed cow would do and used my big gob to my advantage. Word of mouth is your best friend sometimes as a business owner and I told everyone and their nans about my Vintage Fayre.
Credit where credit is due, none of this would have been possible without the help of everyone involved in the day. Everyone chipped in with advertising and word was getting out there. This might actually turn out to be a good day!
Fun Fact: Before me and J even met (when dinosaurs roamed) we both went to university to study events management. We both dropped out within a few months. Really hoped we could pull this off though.
Then the day came, and what a day it was!
First off the traders absolutely smashed it. Stalls looked beautiful, welcoming and professional. J was absolutely in his element with Negative Development - helping lots of people to pick up their first ever film cameras. Alicia's selection of western vibe vintage was a visitor favourite with lots of happy people coming away with great finds. Including Joe who took home a very fabulous jacket.
The BWS Vintage racks got loads of attention and the Retro games station was a smash hit! Cara brought along pretty much every gameboy game ever made, along with some that should never have been made. We had Gameboy cameras and printers set up for people to capture some very detailed (or questionable) selfies and of course lots of discussions over starter Pokemon.
Good Thing Coffee kept the beer and good times flowing, with their sandwiches proving so popular they sold out! So grateful to the guys for sorting us decks so that Haunted Dancehall could play some tunes and people loved flicking through their records.
The day ended with beers and celebrations all round from us traders, a truly great day. A huge huge huge thank you to everyone that came and visited our first ever Vintage Fayre, I really hope you had fun there.
We had so much fun in-fact that we are pleased as punch to announce that we have our next Vintage Fayre lined up for Sunday 1st September at The Foundry Project in the Norther Quarter. Hope to see you there babes!
Laurel xx
