To talk about the lessons learned from my first market season I first will bring you up to speed with how I came to find the opportunity itself. It came around, as most opportunities do, quite randomly and unexpectedly sometime in the late ski season. I happened to be enjoying my apres-ski coffee (probably with some sort of festive liqueur comfortably settled deep within the cup) when Mariah walked into the very same cafe, not super shocking as she is a coffee connoisseur and barista extraordinaire. Mariah had just begun her amazing foray into stained glass, making colorful and cozy mountains that were the perfect way to jazz up a dull window and enliven a cozy space. I complimented her on her beautiful pieces and she on mine, soon enough we made a loose plan that we should try and do a market together for the upcoming season. I think we can both attest that this idea, though lovely, probably had a small chance of coming to fruition. As luck would have it though, the Minturn Market co-ordinator reached out to Mariah to ask if she would be interested in hosting a booth. Mariah, in turn, reached out to me and asked if I would actually be interested in to sharing the booth with her. The answer was a loud, excited squawk of a YES. I did not hesitate for a moment, I felt that this was the dream scenario; a chance to create a colorful and eclectic booth with my awesome friend and have a built in camaraderie to offset an otherwise very long and lonely day manning a booth while actively curtailing your hopes and dreams.
We shared a similar vision for curating a colorful and inviting haven that would act as the siren for the groovy spirit hiding within each market dweller. Naturally, we also felt very strongly that we needed a rug to “really tie the [booth] together”. A mission that became a success after we paint bombed an old forgotten rug on its last legs of life to give it a new found importance as the centerpiece of our booth. I can say, with great confidence, that our rug was indeed a great hit with the dogs of the market place, each four legged friend was quick to pull its owner into the tent to take its turn to revel atop the masterpiece.
Since this would be the first real market season that I would be participating in I also knew that I needed to invest in some sort of wire gate to display my pieces on. Without a notion of how well I would do at this market, or how much traffic I could expect it to have, I did not want to overspend on my setup budget. On one hand, it was very tempting to go all in and spend big bucks upfront to create the perfect display but only participating in a single market every weekend would put a rather lot more of pressure to be able to break even on the expenses. This brought me around to the delightful conclusion that I would simply have to scavenge for display materials around my house and commandeer whatever it was that would work in our booth. My spoils ended up being a classic foldable table which I outfitted with a classy white linen, a wooden side table and finally a little white shoe shelf to complete the furniture set. I decided to buy a baby gate, you know the ones you put on top of your stairs and lock all of your non-baby guests in? Yeah— the very kind. With zip ties we could mount it across the sides of the tent which seemed a nifty enough display solution for me. The variety in furniture also allowed me to maximize the space of the booth and keep drawn eyes entertained. Each blink of the eye could reveal new gems cached within the assortment of mismatched furniture.
Before our first market, Mariah and I met up on a lovely windy day and did a mock run of what our booth setup would look like. The gusts of wind made it fairly evident on a couple creative mashups of the furnitures that would not work as they would dramatically topple over when bullied by the wind. We managed to figure out the best way to secure our furniture down while assuring and convincing each other that Minturn is a magical place that does not actually get wind. By the end of the session we both would have sworn that we had never once felt a breeze while in the little rugged mountain town.
The skirmish with the wind was a little preview of the weekly battle with the wind we would be fighting. Much like Lord Voldemort, the wind is a tough and relentless bugger to battle and wind proofing soon became a never ending project that was in constant need of innovation and quick reflexes.
My biggest take away from the market experience, as an artist’s booth, was the absolute necessity of having a wrap around canvas to enclose the sides of your tent and protect your hard work from the gorilla warfare tactics implemented by the elements. Especially, being set up in a mountain town where the weather is unpredictable and quite schizophrenic, it is even more important to come up with a set up that will protect against wind and rain because unfortunately, in an entire market season those two fellas are gonna come calling at one point or another. I will admit, I looked fairly foolish running after art prints that were carried away in the wind every time a gust came running our way.
The other important “set up” take away I found from my first market season was the importance of having visual “levels” in your booth. When Mariah and I set up the first week we had all of our products and tables set up in the very back of the tent. Our thought was to create more space for people to bumble on it to check out our colorful creations. The reality was that people were too scared to come into the physical booth to figure out if they wanted to spend any time perusing our wares, so instead they would move on to the next more obvious tent. We played around with our set up every week trying to learn what worked best and what was a disaster. The most appealing set up, or successful set ups I might say, came from putting my smaller table with a display of my mini prints at the very front of the booth while my “baby gate” was hanging on the side just past it with the shoe shelf just below. The tables we set up in the middle of the tent so people had half the distance to cover to see the visual treats we had laboriously prepared to entice them. Similar to catching a fish, this strategy presented the bait at the front of the booth, if enticed we could wind in the reel a bit closer until they either bite or swim away. Hopefully in this situation the outcome for our caught little fishies is far brighter than that of our gilled greats.
The last thing I will share about this market today is a little advice to research the market you are about to participate in and join. Obviously, as I mentioned above, this was the most perfect opportunity that I could have hoped for. That being said, I do not think that my particular art style necessarily jived with the crowd that liked to frequent this particular market. That is not to say that people didn’t come into our booth and give me the honor of looking at my work and what I hoped to provide for them, but rather that the majority of the crowd did not match my specific “customer avatar”. Meaning, there were far less ski fanatics wandering through the stalls than I would have expected or desired. I do believe that I could have adapted to this better and curated my pieces more towards my cowgirls and mountain mama collections, or even showcased more of my animal kingdom collection. This is a skill that I am determined to improve upon the next time I sign up for a long and arduous market season….whenever that may be.
Thank you for reading along with me this week as I took you through the winding river that showcased my very first market season. I hope that some of my reflections on how I went about setting up our booth might help you with yours, or at the very least entertain you! Come back next Sunday at 10am to relive the awkward art of “reading people” who saunter into your booth.
As always,
Keep it offbeat!
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