Setting Up My First Art Market Table
I launched my first market table for Amm’s Art yesterday at East Village for the Fall for East Village Event. It was an extremely LONG day, I loaded up my car the night before the event and headed out the door at about 7:15 am the following day. By the Time I was back home and my car was unloaded it was almost 8pm (everything is still sitting on my floor and it needs to be put away). Not to mention the time that I spent running around all week to Rona and Home Depot to figure out just how I was going to set my booth up. I feel that presentation is very important for drawing people in to your booth and I wanted my display to work with the theme of my products without overpowering the products themselves.
There were definitely a lot of lessons learnt from this event. I’m going to highlight a few of the major ones:
- Plan ahead, know the dimensions of your space and do a mock set-up at home ahead of time and take a picture of it so that you can reference it the day of.
- Have enough stock, you don’t want to run out- although it would be amazing to have your whole table be sold out!
- Do not overcrowd the table, everything you have doesn’t need to be piled onto the table. I displayed only a few of each type of item that I was offering.
- Pack everything you could possibly need plus extra for the booth setup: duct tape, scotch tape, masking tape, nails, hooks, safety pins, clothing pins, twine, scissors, tools etc.
- Have business cards and an email sign up sheet in order to be able to contact people who are interested in your things but may not need any at that exact moment.
- Mark your prices clearly so that customers don’t have to keep asking how much something is.
- Don’t miss out on a sale. Get some sort of credit card reader for your phone so that you can accept credit card payments- so many people do not carry cash!
- Ask for help! Enlist a family member or friend to help out with setting up and taking down your booth because it’s a lot of work and an extra set of hands really helps.
- Talk to other vendors, they have so much knowledge and advice for marketing, sales, pricing, and dealing with some of the things people can say when passing your booth.
- Have fun! Remember, even if you don’t sell much you’re getting the name of your business and your brand out there.
© Ammara Cokar 2014
