My first stall

[Joel OF]

Hi folks, a few weeks from now I'll be doing my first stall, I'm a mix of nerves and excitement.

 

I've attached a couple pics of a hook display I've made. (In real life the display looks a little less cluttered than it does in the pics). I'll make 2 or 3 more similar displays to show candle holders, bowls, meat serving forks etc.

 

I know the factors behind how to price your work but as this will be my first stall and I'm an amateur/novice it'd be nice to get second opinions that my pricing is fair.

 

Do you guys and gals think that £4.50 ($7.02) for the screw in hooks, £6 ($9.36) for the round bar hooks, £8 ($12.48) for the twisted square bar hooks and £8 for the 2 piece round bar hooks are sensible prices?

 

My stall will be at a farmers food market but the footfall is high and the clientele are "the right sort", so even if I don't sell anything I think it'll be good to get known and maybe some people will take business cards.

Cheers for any help and advice!

[HIGHSIDER]

Hello Joel,

 

I do like those hooks, very nice work indeed. There's body in those hooks and in my opinion your asking price is bang on the money. I don't believe it excessive. I'd happily pay that. May even haggle for a bundle for a good price lol, but that's what you may face at a market. I hope you sell loads of them. Good luck with the stall.

 

PS, Love the Avatar. The Wicker Man, one of the best if not the best horror flicks to come out of the UK. Christopher Lee at his very best. Man I've got to stick that film on and watch it again!!

[jmccustomknives]

Idk, the pricing looks good.  You probably don't have time, but one thing I've learned from doing events like that is to have a good cross section of items and price ranges.  If all you have is one thng (hooks) that's the only people who will stop.  I make knives, with those I try to cover cheaper working knives but also nicer stuff for the collector.  Women won't stop by my table or hurry their husbands, so for them I have some decorative art.  Put something on your table that is really nice, price it high.  It tells the prospective buyer that you are proud of your work, and even though they may not be able to afford the expensive item they can afford the less expensive.  Car companies do this for a reason, it works (you know, Corvettes; Vipers).   Good luck.

[Joel OF]

Cheers guys. I'm going to work a few more bits and bobs today - food orientated stuff seeing as it's a food market.

Re: the avatar Highsider - I love vintage horror, big Hammer Horror fan. Watch Witchfinder General after you've watched The Wicker Man :D

[HIGHSIDER]

lol...must do that..thanks..

[DSW]

Nice display. Presentation is everything. Having something like this is much better than simply piling them on a table or just laying out a few samples with more in the box behind the table. Going vertical on the table helps increase your presence visually from a distance as well as allowing you to maximize the space available. Hanging items or tall displays allow people at a distance to see what you are selling without having to walk right up, especially if you have a bunch of people crowding around looking at your stuff. A backdrop behind you can help keep hanging items from blending into the background and can often be another place to display things like picture frames or plant hangers. Even if these sorts of things don't sell, they act as a big sign to bring people over to see what they might like.

A friend of mine who does demos has an old bead board barn door as his table top for things like this. It fits in well with the old wrought iron work and gives his stuff the "antique" feel. The door is just about like he found it with faded flat paint and dings and scratches. It's clean and neat, but still has "character".

Another thought right now is on pricing and money. For flea markets and sales, nice round numbers helps you out. If you sell something for $9 vs say $10, you have to plan on having a ton of ones to make change with. Same goes with coinage. I'd rather price something at $2 than say $1,50 and have to deal with a ton of coins. I've also found many people carry larger bills like $20's these days. You can blow thru a ton of change in a short time with cheap $2-5 items. Plan accordingly and bring plenty of change. You'll often find most other venders aren't willing to part with the change they have for similar reasons, so don't expect to be able to break those $20's with another vender if you get in a bind. I've seen people walk away from decent sales because you can't make change for what they have, and they don't want to buy more to use up the rest of the bill.

One thing that is great is that you can get free apps and card readers that will let you take plastic these days using a smart phone. You usually just pay a percentage on the transaction, like 3%, and they don't care if you do 2 or 3 sales or 50. Much better than the old style where you had to open a merchant services account and pay not only a percentage, but a monthly fee if you were under so many sales dollars. My buddy had dropped taking plastic a few years back  because he didn't have enough sales to make it cost effective the old way. With the reader and his smart phone he doesn't need to worry about that sort of thing any more and he's found it can simplify his life at markets. You do "loose" some money for the transaction fee, but it's not a huge amount and he finds that on average the convenience outweighs the small extra cost. Now if he can't make change he can always ask if they'd rather use their card. Most don't bat an eye and whip it out, often buying more since now they don't have to worry about using up all their free cash in one spot.

Also be sure to have some cards available with contact information. I don't like to put out a ton at one time since people tend to pick them up and then throw them away. I leave out a few, but keep the rest in the back to hand out if asked and to refill the holder every so often. Keep a pad and pen handy as well to note down their contact information and make sketches if someone wants a custom piece made up.

[billyO]

As far as expanding product line, garden tools are good additions for farmer's markets.

[Chinobi]

I wonder if incense burners would move well?

Best of luck to you!

[Joel OF]

Cheers people.

 if you have a bunch of people crowding around looking at your stuff

I love your optimism. ;)

[Joel OF]

I wonder if incense burners would move well?

Definitely not, haha. About half a mile walk away from the market is a hippy shop I used to work in, it's like a Mecca for incense addicts. Incense holders there = £1.

[Chinobi]

but are they nice incense holders? :) if there is already a large established market of incense consumers, there will be a market for handmade awesome incense burners :) try a pilot program for it, make a few and see what happens, if they don't sell then you have a few more Christmas gifts, if they do then you just broke into a whole new market that you have already cornered.

 

try making one like a feather from a piece of angle iron, maybe make one from an old rasp and leave it looking very rasp-y (scroll out the tang like an old candle holder handle), etc etc.  maybe one step farther and do one as a rasp-ligator with the back fullered down to catch the ash instead of up like the real critter.

[DSW]

Cheers people.

I love your optimism. ;)

 

 

Not so much optimism as lots of experience with retail, flea markets, trade shows  and so on. Stuff laying flat on the table can be hard to see if there is a crowd of people standing in front of your booth. They don't even have to be looking at your product to block the view. This is especially true at shows and markets where the isles are narrow and there is a good sized turnout. Simply people moving from A to B will block what you are selling to many. then there are the ones who will just look, but aren't interested in buying. They also block the view of interested customers.

 

People won't buy your stuff if they don't know you have it. 1st trick is to get them to come over and look. Having merchandise, displays, signs or similar "attractants" that can be clearly seen from a distance is your 1st line of offense. Once the customers come over and start looking, now's the time to hook them with items of interest. Doing demo's o working on product also works well, but not all places will accept the noise/smoke etc, so that can be of limited value.

 

 

Next time you go to a market, take a look at how stuff is merchandised. You'll probably note that vendors with the most customers have fairly decent layouts for product.

 

 

One other thing that's good to have on hand I didn't mention earlier is a portfolio of other work you've done in the past. You can either leave it open on the table, or have it available to show people what you can do. I wished I'd started taking good clean clear photo's of my work earlier in my career. I lost the opportunity to show case some really spectacular stuff because I didn't bother to document it until it was too late to do so. Now I try to photograph as much as possible after completion as well as a few process picts. A clean white sheet makes a nice simple backdrop for picts without distractions.

[Joel OF]

Cheers for the tips. I got a load more oak "scrap" from a timber framer the other day including a piece of waney edge oak about 1inch thick and about 15inches wide - my Dad's going to sign write my name onto that and I'm going to forge a simple bracket to hang it off. I'll fix the bracket to a mini timber frame I'll make from the other pieces of oak. It'll just be simple stuff but it should have a nice eye-catching feel to it, industrial meets spit and sawdust wild west bar I'm envisioning.

[Chinobi]

Can you serve whisky? :-D

[Joel OF]

I made these keyring bottle openers today. I haven't finished them yet, do you think I need to "food safe" finish them? i Haven't put the keyrings on yet either, obviously.

 

Made from 8mm bar, they're about 4inches long and 1.5inches wide. What do we think...£4?

 

I promise I won't do this with every product, I just want initial reassurance that my pricing is OK.

[DSW]

Feel free to post up all your items. Never hurts to give someone else ideas for themselves later.

 

Price wise it looks in line with the hooks you posted earlier to me.

[Frosty]

For a "wild west bar" feel you ought to brand the lettering on. Of course selling the branding irons is expected. Selling whiskey would complete the theme.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Joel OF]

Should I put price labels on things? Is it better for people to see the price straight off is it better if they have to ask?

On that hook display I'd grouped the hooks together by price so I could just have 1 price label per set of hooks rather than having individual tags dangling off each hook, which would look really messy.

[Chinobi]

mark it up by section of display, dont bother with tags on individual items.  or make a 'menu' board with each item and the price.

[DSW]

Only issue I've found with "generic" tags on sections is that at some point people will start moving things around. In some cases it's unintentional. They pick up a piece and want to put it "back", yet stick it in the wrong spot. In other cases I've seen people deliberately play "shell games" and try and mix up stuff so they can claim you had it tagged wrong and insist you sell it for a lower price. They want to make a scene and make you look like the bad guy if you try and stay firm. Sad there are people like this out there, but expect the worst... "cheap" sales like markets often bring out some of the worst customers looking to get bargains on already good deals. Many of the worst ones are dealers who plan to resell stuff back at their own shop later. They'll beat you up over a dollar or two and then go home and put $25 or more on top of the cost of a $5 item...

 

 

Now having said that, individual tags can be a PITA, expensive and distracting from a nice display. On multiple small items in some cases it's not worth it. It's better to have a clear "generic" sign, preferably one with a clear picture of the priced item vs individual tags. Larger more individual pieces can rate individual tags, preferably with a  brief description so someone can't pull a tag switch.

 

 

In some ways it's easier to simply not have prices listed, but personally I hate that as a consumer. Someone can't move tags if they aren't there, but then you constantly have to tell people over and over again the cost of a $4 hook...

 

 

What we found seemed to work best at Scuba flea markets was a generic tag with pict on plastic bins of bulk items. I bit "cheap" looking for wrought iron merchandise I agree, but I could see something done for your block of hooks like this. More expensive mid range items usually just got a generic tag. In some cases a color code system worked well, either colored tags, electrical tape or zip ties. A sign added elsewhere gave the pricing schedule. Red was say $10, Blue $15, Yellow $20 and so on. Tape and zip ties tended to be the hardest to remove vs string tags.  The stick on dots they sell at stationary stores generally worked poorly on irregular shaped items unless the dot could wrap all the way around and attach to itself. Very expensive items got their own individual tag with description and price. We'd also often mark them with a special color zip tie to note an individual price on a tag. That or they would be marked without a price and customers would have to inquire on a specific item.

[Joel OF]

They want to make a scene and make you look like the bad guy if you try and stay firm. Sad there are people like this out there

 

Mate, I worked in a shop that was on the tourist route for nearly 8 years, I expect the worst. "I know my rights, you have to give me a refund, it doesn't matter that I haven't got a receipt or any proof of purchase".

 

Made this today, struggled with how to fix it to the wall for hours. Tried a million and one variations, none really appealed. This is the least of the worst I guess.

 

Is there a way of making the more typical dish and spike candle holders without welding the dish to the spike? Do they need to be welded together?

[John B]

Rivet

 

 

[DSW]

I like the look of those John.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Tommie sticker, uses an intrical cup. There is a tutorial on anvilfire, by bill epps.

[John B]

I like the look of those John.

 

Thank you kindly, they were made on a weekend by a couple of my students some years ago.

 

The reason we don't use the prickets are because of safety issues, and also the modern candles crumble when being fitted onto the spike,

 

Most of the Church candle styles have a washer to secure the wick to which is at the base of the candle, so even preheating the pricket does not help, so we go with an adequate sconce (for tea lights or shorter church candles), or candle nozzle for thinner candles and also taller church candles, the nozzles don't have to be tube.