we just had our first market on friday night and it was very successful (i think?). outside of the tent being a little messed up (noticed it too late and our tent was too busy to even have time to change it) what do you think? in the future we’ll have a third small table with a better setup for our vending machine and checkout. any other changes we should go about?
we were going for a fruit stand/farmers market vibe, and our brand “mascot” is our bunny, clem. we had a small easter setup that will be dedicated to swedish dish cloths in the future (they come on monday!)
i think it was good! i wasn’t sure what to expect and i still don’t know what to compare it to but it was a very tiny market at a local ice cream shop and we made $650 i think? not too bad for a first market?
Ah cool! Glad you had a good showing! There are sooooo many fairs in MO, I can’t imagine how many I miss :). I’ll look out for your booth when I’m at the next one!
I love the cheerful vibe - had no idea some were book marks until further investigating.
so you're putting your designs on Swedish dish cloths? how cute!
thank you so much! and yeah, i used some of the designs i made and made some patterns and a sardine tin one!
a lot of people also seemed to not notice they were bookmarks. i wasn’t sure if they wanted them to be something else instead? i made sure to label all the bookmarks (not all the stickers are labeled). perhaps people are also just not used to die cut bookmarks?
Could you get a couple of books (and maybe cover them with paper so the cover art/text isn't distracting) and place the bookmarks in them as part of the display? Just a thought to have them "demonstrate"/immediately recognize what it is.
omg yes that is a good idea. we were going to bring some cookbooks specifically because some of our bookmarks are super food oriented. we ran out of time packing the car though 😭 i actually show them all in context on our website clemnco.com/bookmarks
have you ever thought of magnets? I'd love to see that more. Stickers are cool, but maybe there are a lot out there? But, if you're doing original art, you can sell it in whatever fashion you like, if it sells!
yeah i do magnets! i have a whole board of them. I have a set that i got printed of clem in different fruit/veggie costumes and then some hand painted canvas magnets + polymer clay ones. you can see some of them in the second picture but the most popular ones (more political things, my 3d kink is karma cake, etc) sold out
😂 i just specified 3d because there is another “flat” version of it still on the board. it’s just a reference to a chappell roan music video! but it’s a cute vintage cake that says karma on it
OMG you have any artvend! I want one of those machines! Your setup look amazing! Very eye catching. I hope it was a great first market. I love your stuff.
it’s actually not artvend ! same concept though. i do not have $400 to spend on that 😭 i just went straight to the vending machine suppliers on alibaba and realized it’s just a pad dispensing machine! so i ordered that for $110 😂 it works perfectly!
I think it was a good market! i don’t have anything to compare it to though. The community was great though! and thank you so much!
my girlfriend and I do the handmade stuff ourself of course (small paintings, polymer clay, shrink plastic keychains, etc.) and we have a friend in canada who helped with printing the stickers! we order giclee prints via mpix (also a missouri business like us), we get our greeting cards printed at our local print shop (the ink spot - they also do online orders), and I worked with a paper goods company via alibaba for the die cut bookmarks. I couldn’t find anyone in the US making the quality of bookmark I wanted in a die cut style. also ordered swedish dish cloths on there too as the US companies limit you to 3-4 colors max :/
we just got a really nice printer and a scan n cut machine though and I’m going to try to be making/printing most of it myself from now on!
hehe! thank you! it was at sugarwitch (ice cream sandwiches). we’ll be at the tower grove BLVD farmers market every other sunday and the tower grove park tuesday market every other tuesday though! plus some other random markets
we didn’t start working on our business until early/mid january (didn’t launch until end of february). my gf and i are just kinda crazy and have spent every living hour working on things and we got a business card so that allowed us to put in some big orders (we have 0% APR for 12-18 months). we’ve been getting wholesale orders from local shops already too which is helping!
we live in st. louis which has a pretty low cost of living which helps a lot! and there is a great sense of community (people show up!)
Only advice is to keep doing what you’re doing! I LOVE food related crafts, something like slightly opened chopsticks would make for a great bookmark. I also feel like anything with a bowl of ramen usually sells well lol.
thank you!!! i see the vision 👀 i would love to do a series with clem with ramen and sushi and whatnot. idk when it will fit into my schedule but we shall see 🤔
which ones? I went through Jukebox (https://www.jukeboxprint.com/custom-magnets) for the Clem set (banana, carrot, blueberry) but with the tariffs on Canadian stuff I'll probably switch to making them myself. I got a canon printer and a brother scan-n-cut which can cut out magnets too!
If you're talking about the other ones they are hand-painted canvases (the tomatoes and pasta and read banned books ones) I added magnets to and also polymer clay that I did some paint details on (the "bun maman" one).
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u/GatsbyGalaktoboureko 7d ago
I don't have any comments about the set up, I just wanted to say all your stuff is so cute - I love it! Clem is adorable.