Market stalls can make a lot of money and gain great exposure for your brand... if they are done right.
This complete guide to market stall selling will give the best tips for selling, offer preparation advice, and help you get started at your first market.
It will answer how to start a market stall, how much a market stall will cost, what it’s like to sell and what you need to bring to your first market. This is designed to help you get the best results possible at your first event.
Whether you are an experienced trader, or just starting to think about doing your first market stall, this complete guide to market stall selling will show you some useful things to consider and make your stall more profitable.
WHAT’S IT REALLY LIKE SELLING AT A MARKET STALL
Have you ever considered what it’s like to sell at a market?
Perhaps you are thinking about launching a new product and would like to know some tricks to promote sales. Maybe you are just curious, wondering what it’s like to be on the other side and what goes through a sellers mind.
Everyone has engaged with market traders before. Whether you feel you are being constantly watched, pressured into purchasing, or able to browse at ease, we have all come into contact with market stall sellers.
You may love them or hate them, but you can normally find some pretty unique things being sold.
Here we are going to cover what it’s like to be a seller at a market, covering both the highs and the lows of selling physical products in person. As you dive deeper into this article, we will share the tips and tricks we have learned over a number of years to help increase our market stall sales.
WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING A MARKET SELLER - BEHIND THE SCENES
In summary, markets can be pretty hit and miss.
On a good day, the people attending are your exact audience. They relate to your brand, are interested to find out more, engage in conversation and most importantly buy!
Before you think that market stalls are easy, let me warn you that if you get it wrong and the audience is not the one you wished for, you can end up standing around for hours without making any sales whatsoever. Not only can this be a waste of your time, they can also be expensive and completely demoralising.
With this in mind, what should you consider before deciding to trade at a market?
A COMPLETE GUIDE TO MARKET STALL SELLING: TOP 10 TIPS FOR YOUR FIRST MARKET STALLS
What you should consider before your first market stall
There are 6 things you should consider before selling at a market. These are particularly important if you are new to market selling.
1. Know whether the audience attending is right for you
Firstly, work out whether the audience likely to attend is the right fit for your brand. This means they must be the right age, demographic, shared interests, and most importantly be willing to spend.
One of our first market experiences was just 2 days before Christmas. I know what you are thinking, 2 days before Christmas, surely you can’t get better timing.
This is exactly what we thought as well.
The truth is that had it not been for our friends turning up at our first stall, we would have sold next to nothing.
It appeared that by this point in the month everyone had finished their Christmas shopping. London was a ghost town, I have never seen London so quiet. The streets normally busy on the weekend were dead, it seemed that everyone had left the city to visit relatives in the country.
Sadly, there have been a number of similar ‘learning opportunities’ for us when it comes to judging whether the audience is right. One such event we thought would be perfect was a sustainability focused brand launch for a yoga and meditation event.
The truth was that their marketing clearly wasn’t attracting the crowds they expected. The small audience it did pull to the school assembly hall looking location was not our target audience, forming an older demographic than we typically attract and one who had come primarily for the yoga and not to buy products.
Similarly, we have experienced first hand that at evening events customers are more interested in buying food and drink than physical products. As the interest in alcohol increases through the evening, the attention physical product sellers received corresponding decreases.
Therefore, the biggest piece of advice is to work out whether an event is truly suited to your brand, if it will be busy, and whether people will be willing to spend.
This is often hard to do, and a lot is dependent on things outside of your control such as the weather. Therefore, if possible try to do a recce of similar events or at the same location and decide whether you think the audience will be right for you.
