How to Navigate your First In-Person Market

Inventory

When deciding the amount of products you need to make consider the size of the market, the time you have available and the cost of your items. We make 75–100 items since the market we attend is well-known, our items are on the smaller size and we have time in the summer to prepare.

Table Design

Markets don’t usually give vendors a lot of space, so it’s important to use your space effectively. We create different levels and section in our booth so that our space looks visually appealing and uncluttered.

Display Containers — To create different levels stack display containers on top of each other and place products wherever you can. Our hexagon containers allowed us to have three different levels. We also recommend repurposing household items for your display, we made mini plushie platforms out of Jenga blocks and tape.

Lighting — If you’re attending an outdoor nighttime market or a market with limited lighting you need to bring your own lighting. We usually bring four lanterns and incorporate them in our table by placing them underneath containers or putting plushies on top of them.

Decor + Sign — We recommend bringing additional decor pieces to give more visual interest to your table. Since we attend a holiday market, last year we brought a snowman and a Baby Yoda doll wearing a Christmas hat. It’s also important to have some signifier of your shop/artist name. We made a sign (out of posterboard) with QR codes to our shop and TikTok along with doodles of our plushies.

Packaging — These markets move quite fast with multiple people trying to purchase at the same time. To pack efficiently, we use craft paper bags and small holiday gift bags for larger items.

Price Tags — You need to have some form of price list/tag on your table. For our first market we had one big price list in a frame, but that caused confusion with customers always having to look back and forth. For our second market we made little price signs out of tooth picks and tags from the dollar store and they worked perfectly!

Finances

We recommend having both card (debit and credit) and cash payment options available for customers.

We personally used a Square terminal for card purchases paired with the Square app on our phones. We pre-load item prices into the Square app prior to attending the market so that we can easily select items when a customer is buying. We also bring a cash box with small change and bills.

Finally, since we attend the market with our family, they help us record all our order on a clipboard. This is mainly so that we can track amount of items we sold + the amount of money we made.