recently, I participated in my first Holiday market: Here IT is what i’ve learned
For starters, a holiday market is an event where you go to buy or, in my case this year, to sell ‘things’. You can sell anything from food, to home decor, to clothes, jewellery, … you name it. If you think about it, it’s very smart to do it right before the holidays, when people spend a ton of money on gifts. So, I decided, 2022 was going to be my first time at a holiday market as a seller. And this is how it went…
Psst, to keep reading, scroll down…
Let me introduce: The one and only Moshito Design Stand
This is my Moshito Design stand, but in order to get here… Well, let’s say, there is a lot of work behind the scenes. And more importantly, lots and lots of DECISIONS!
So, unfortunately this story didn’t begin on November 3rd at 10am. It began months before when I decided I wanted to participate. But let me fast forward a bit, to the morning of November 3rd… This is what I wrote a little bit before the holiday market officially started:
I got here early because I know me and getting here late would only add to my stress. I just wanted to give myself time to set up and breath… I am already set up, obviously. Waiting was making me nervous. I don’t want to drink a lot of coffee or water out of boredom and have to make infinite trips to the toilets.
So, rather than just sit and wait, I decided to work on my computer until the action gets started. It gives me something to do and takes my mind away from the stress. So, here I am at 9,42 am writing about my holiday market. I can’t tell you yet how it went because it doesn’t officially start until 10 am. But I can tell you about some of the steps I took to get to today, not just logistically but also mentally.
It started last Christmas when I heard that the embassy organizes a holiday market for spouses of diplomats to sell their food, crafts, handmade items, … you name it! I thought it was a great idea for me to participate. I didn’t even flinch and started to think about what would make more sense for me to offer. Not really seriously, until a few months ago.
And not because I thought of it, but I ask myself a really great question. So, my first piece of advice is to think about the people that are going to come to your market and what would they want to buy? You can think of yourself, what would you buy?? What would you be looking for?
So I sat down and wrote down a list of things I would like to offer. In my case, I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, so I wanted to come up with things I could sew myself (not too time consuming) and a few that I could procure online to make my life easier. The list can be big, but you are going to have to narrow it down depending on time and budget.
Then, you have to do the research. Where can you find the items you have in mind? A few things to consider are:
- Shipping times
- Shipping costs
- Packing options and prices
- Tags and labels (also add to the final price)
- Business cards
And just so you know, the research part takes time. As you probably know already, but there are a lot of companies out there. If you haven’t tried before it’s hard to know how their products are going to look like. So, my second piece of advice, if you can start months before and order samples to decide which one you like best. You want to offer things that you feel super comfortable with and that you love!
Keep your buyers in mind at all times and ask yourself questions: are they women? men? what age? what do they like? what are their hobbies? what do they need? are they buying holiday gifts?
It took a little bit longer than 10am for people to start showing up. But then it got busy and I didn’t have time to write anything else, but it definitely helped me mentally!
Remember:
Try to create something unique for your au
The market actually went really well. For me, I decided on 3 main products:
1.- I made headbands and scrunchies from fabric I bought from Raspberry Creek Fabrics. I can’t say enough good things about their fabrics and everyone thought the headbands were so soft!
2.- I ordered some holidays cards with my designs. One of my cards has the Kilimanjaro on the background, some safari animals, Christmas lights, and Santa flying through the sky. And it’s a great example of thinking about ‘your customers’. Mine live in Kenya and are sending holiday cards to their loved ones soon! So, that was terribly successful!
3.- Tea Towels. My tea towels didn’t make it on time and I only had the samples I had ordered. So, that was a bummer but you have to be ready for this kind of things. The company sent the tea towels to the wrong address… I decided to create a pre-order type list with the tea towel that will hopefully arrive one day and see if I could anyone interested. To my surprise, a got a few customers very interested. But the reality is that it’s much easier to sell things that you actually have!
Writing things down, staying organize, and coming up with a plan that made sense helped a lot. But I would lie if I told you I did it by myself. My daughters and my husband gave me feedback every step of the way. So did my friends Isabel and Margareth. I can’t not emphasize enough how so very important it is to have friends in the field that undertand you and support you! And I repeat, friends in your FIELD. If you are new to the field, so was I. Let’s be friends!
Going to back to the holiday market. Overall I thought it went pretty well. People were very interested and extremely surprised when I told them I made the designs myself. I would love to do it again soon because it is a great way to connect with people and talk to them about your brand!
If you are thinking about starting to sell in person and have questions, please feel free to reach out! I’d love to help you get started and troubleshoot!
I am going to leave a few great resources I used that I loved. Some of them were recommended to me.
1.- Holiday cards from Uprinting.
2.- Tags for my headbands and tea towels from EverEmblem.
3.- Fabric from Raspberry Creek Fabrics. For the headbands and scrunchies I used the Organic Cotton Spandex Jersey and the Bamboo Cotton Spandex.
I printed my own business cards and ‘care instructions’ for the tea towels.
Thank you for reading all the way!
Ana