How often do you get to the Christmas trading window and realise that you could have earned more sales if you had purchased more stock or booked more markets earlier in the year? Don’t ask me how I know this!
Getting your market stall business ready for big trading events like Christmas or Black Friday (or any festive events relevant to your own community) needs forethought and planning. There is a lot to consider, from Stock levels to employing extra Staff to future planning your Marketing efforts to purchasing any extra equipment or supplies. In an ideal world, planning needs to begin 12 months before the event.
Pre-Book Events
For established market stallholders your regular markets will carry on throughout the year, so you will not need to pre-book your regular pitches. However, when it comes to the times of the year that you know can generate double or triple your usual sales, you will want to book as many lucrative markets or shows as you can manage. Bookings are generally done months before the event itself, and many take bookings at the very beginning of the year for the end of the year events.
Once you get to know the good events to book, you will need to be quick off the mark because the good ones are always in high demand. Be canny about when these pitches are released and book as soon as you can. Many will accept bookings with payment taken nearer the event – but many want your money when you book. This practice obviously is to the benefit of the event organiser, however, it can put a real strain on your finances before you have even started to earn any money from them!
Stock
Planning how much stock you will need for the busy times will take experience and an element of risk. If you buy your stock, it will be advisable to have a space large enough to hold it until the busy period. If you make your stock, then a lot of people make their stock during the whole year, so that they have enough for their busy period.
The problem will arise if you sell food or drink items that have a limited shelf life. If this is the case then, you will only earn as much as you can make during your restricted time period. To increase your earnings potential you may consider employing staff for your small window of opportunity. When we make fudge for Christmas, we are at full capacity and often recruit family and friends for the less technical tasks of packaging and wrapping.
Too little stock and you won’t benefit from the seasonal spikes and too much you might be left with unsellable items (beyond best before date) or with a store full.
Storage
For a lot of traders, a spare room in their house acts as a storeroom. For others, they pay for a unit. The former is clearly the cheaper option but if you have a stock item that needs a certain climate, then you may have to pay for it. Somewhere that has a suitable ambience for your product and can take the quantity of stock that you will need for the peak times is ideal.
Sales
You may want to organise special festive lines for your products. If not, you may wish to consider it. Stocking up with special gift boxes or hampers and adding Xmas wrapping and bows, sell particularly well during this period. Customers really have too much to think about and buying an easy pre-wrapped present makes their life easier. For the reasons stated, it is much easier to upsell small items onto their current purchase, like an extra wrapping service or yearly subscriptions etc.
Staff
When the going gets tough, call in the troops! Throughout the year it may be wise to train a few of your friends, family or even proper staff so that they can easily be called upon for your busy market stall needs. Finding folk that you can trust implicitly and who are good sellers is not as easy as you may think, but you will mostly want their services at the weekends, so a lot of folk can usually spare a Saturday or Sunday here and there. Especially as you will be paying them! If you can incentivise their wages too, that does help your sales.
Marketing
Pre-planning your marketing efforts during the downtime will help you tremendously when you are beyond busy. Whether it is getting one month of Instagram Posts or Facebook Posts ready to fire off on your content planner without you having to hit publish when it will be the last thing on your mind to do! Getting posts ready to tell your customers where you are going to be trading and how they can get their Christmas goods will boost your sales tremendously. If you give customers marketing cards when they make a purchase, you might want to create a festive collection of marketing materials, that you could use year on year.
Visuals and Vibe (Hygge and Dressing Up)
Christmas is all about the visuals and the vibe. Lots of red and gold and cosy hot chocolate and mulled wine. It’s about getting cold, then snuggling to get warm. That is the feeling that you need to create on your stall. Decorating your stall with tiny Christmas trees and candy canes to baubles and tinsel. Dressing up in the seasons’ gear – at the very least, a loud Xmas jumper! Anything you can to enhance the feeling of the season will help you to increase your sales. Folk go to a market to get this feeling and to get in the moment because it all adds to their shopping experience.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
Lights
Christmas lights de rigeur at this time of year. Not only because it gets dark early, but because it adds to the atmosphere of the experience. It is an inexpensive way to create a Christmassy feel without too much expense. Getting lights will pay off with increased sales. Trust me!
Happy Trading!