How to Use Your Local Flea Market as a Business Incubator
Art shows, craft fairs and street markets are each ideal spots for a pop-up shop where you can test the waters for a product and learn a great deal from fellow vendors.
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Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene
Nadia Georgiou, owner of childrenswear retailer Brooklyn Junior. She had decided two years ago to sell screen-printed children's clothing when her husband found a flier on the street announcing the opening of the Brooklyn Flea, a popular New York market. She signed up and, two years later, is still an active vendor.
It's a classic trope of entrepreneurialism: A hobby grows into a passion, and a passion grows into a saleable service, skill, or product. A day job is abandoned in favor of making the hobby a full-time venture. Many craftsmen, chefs, artists, and retailers have lived this story.
Sites such as Etsy and eBay cater to this type of start-up, but many entrepreneurs still opt to debut their goods at local flea markets. And the timing couldn't be better: Communities around the U.S. are showing a rekindled love for handmade and vintage goods, locally-produced artisan-made crafts, and vintage clothing and housewares. Between economic uncertainty and the desire for simplicity and sustainability, more people are shopping at flea markets.
The greenmarket trend in the food world is also spreading more widely across the U.S. If you can pickle, preserve, brew, or stew something your friends request every holiday, maybe its time to take your creation to a larger audience. So how do you launch a business at a local market? Here's some advice on how to get started.
Dig Deeper: Running a Home-based Business
Flea Market Start-ups: Testing the Waters
When your hobby – be it block-printing stationary, crafting goat-milk soaps, or designing up-cycled lighting fixtures – shows enough promise to justify renting a stall, selling at a local flea market could be worth a shot. Most street fairs and markets have a very low barrier to entry: You'll need transit, a table, a tent (for outdoor markets), a cash box and the ability to contribute a small booth rental fee to the market's organizer (usually $25 to $50 for small communities and $75-$125 for urban fairs). If your community doesn't have a flea market, look for seasonal markets or even neighborhood street fairs.
Even if you're already successfully hawking your wares online, making periodic appearances at craft fairs, art shows, and flea markets can give your business new insight into the market, your regional competition, and local consumers' evolving desires. Think of a flea market table as a pop-up retail store, says Amy Abrams, who founded flea market Artists & Fleas in Brooklyn, New York, in 2003.
"I really think people have used it as a mini storefront," she says. "What we have found is that we were always a low barrier to entry, and though over the years we've grown from about 25 to 50 spaces, we never wanted to be too big, because we want every one of our vendors to do well."
Community markets like Artists & Fleas can serve as barometers for the rest of the retail market. For instance, Abrams says seven years ago she found herself begging North Brooklyn vintage stores to set up booths at her weekend flea market. Now, due to a great sales record at New York-area flea markets, there's sometimes a glut of vintage merchandise – and sellers compete to have the best collection and most knowledge to win customers.
"Our philosophy has always been that the market will always tell us what works," Abrams says. "A flea market is one of the best places in the world to see how people respond to your stuff. We've seen hundreds of people go on to use this as a platform to do what they really want to do. "
That was perfectly true for Nadia Georgiou, owner of childrenswear retailer Brooklyn Junior. She had decided two years ago to sell screen-printed children's clothing when her husband found a flier on the street announcing the opening of the Brooklyn Flea, another market in the New York City borough. She signed up and, two years later, is still an active vendor.
After only several weeks of work, Georgiou says she got a better sense of how to build her business. "I was very fortunate because, being at the flea, I was face-to-face with my customers and what they liked, who they were, and also they told me what they would like to buy," Georgiou says. "They gave me a lot of ideas."
Dig Deeper: Developing a Business Growth Strategy
Flea Market Start-ups: Learning to Think Like an Entrepreneur
Designer Amy Adams started her ceramics design company, Perch, more than seven years ago, mostly by bringing her hand-crafted lamps and vessels to trade shows, where she would sell to retailers at a wholesale cost. When flea markets started popping up in, she jumped on the opportunity to sell her own goods to customers at full retail price. Moreover, flea markets became a place for her to try out new products and gauge interest "At a flea market, that's when I bring new things, or samples, to get a feel for how people feel about it, how they are reacting to it," Adams says.
For vendors at the Brooklyn Flea, the atmosphere is also ripe for learning from other vendors – and collaborating with peers. This is especially true of the growing food and beverage sales wing of the market, which has become something of a social network for culinary entrepreneurs.
Susan Povich is the owner of Red Hook Lobster Pound, which for the past two years has been bringing fresh lobster to Brooklyn from Maine. She says the Flea is an ideal business incubator, and not just because she sells hundreds of $15 lobster rolls each weekend day at the market. If a vendor need a hand with anything form a business form to a supply-side issue, they're always surrounded by peers who can help, she says.
