What if you go to all the trouble of finding a product, securing a market pitch, doing all your research only to find that your product just doesn’t sell? There are many angles for you to consider to appraise your business that will help your products to sell!
“If you build it, they will come” is a classic misquote from a film script (Field of Dreams) that has been adapted into business lore. Nothing could be further from the truth. Arriving with your wares at a market and expecting customers to drop money into your lap is a fools’ errand. Persuading people to part with their hard-earned in exchange for your wares requires a considerable amount of effort on your part. But what to do if your stuff just doesn’t sell?
Presentation
Take a good look at your stall, show pictures of your stall to straight speaking friends and ask “Would you buy from this stall?” If you find an honest, objective response you should have your answer right there and you shouldn’t need to read any further.
Your stall presentation is the face of your business and so are you, or your sales representatives when you are not there. How do you look? How is your smile? Please don’t underestimate your own presentation when standing on a market stall. Look the cleanest and best that you can consider you will have got up extremely early. You may think that you look ok, but imagine what you look like to someone who sees you for the first time. Your new customers are the only people who count here – it is entirely their perception of you that will make them approach your stall – or not.
Too Niche
Your product may be wrong for the audience that attends your specific market. What kind of market is it? If you have a stall at a General Retail market in an industrial town and you are trying to sell your beautiful, exclusive screen prints, know that your audience won’t necessarily have the spare cash nor the inclination to buy something as unnecessary as art. You may be trying to sell your Whole Food, Plant-Based hot lentil stews at a retail market in summer. If your product is too niche (too specialised), it will be difficult to find enough of a receptive audience for it at a market, unless you can find an audience specific to that niche. So WFPB lentil stews would sell better at a Vegan Festival.
Trends Change
You may have first thought of selling cupcakes 10 years ago. It may have taken you this long to get a business up and running, but you know that they sell well because you remember the man who sold them always sold out. But now that you have started your own cupcake business they are not selling as you thought. Sometimes trends change, the market was saturated and things are no longer as popular as they were a few years ago. So either offer a different type of cake (Brownies are on-trend now) or adapt and innovate your current offerings into the ‘now’.
Branding is Off
If your brand clear and clean? Are your business colours consistent with your logo (if you have one)? Is it clear what you sell from your banner and is that clear from a distance? e.g. white writing on a dark background (and vice versa) stands out particularly well.
“Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room.”
Jeff Bezos
The whole point of having a brand is to be able to build a reputation. It should be consistent throughout all of your communications. A brand helps the brain create a shorthand towards filtering information and coming to a (hopefully) positive buying conclusion. Branding gives a business a distinct identity and presence that will attract customers – it is also important for maintaining customer loyalty and retention. Don’t think that just because you are selling on a market stall that this is not important. If your stall is recognisable from week to week, your customers will find you.
Effective Frequency
Effective Frequency is a marketing term for how many times someone must see something new before they are interested enough to buy. This is not an exact science but as an experienced market trader, it does explain a lot. When trying out a new product that nobody else will have seen before, it will take a few outings for people to even approach you and ask about your wares. Folk are initially curious, then after a few sightings they begin to recognise the product and after a few more sightings will decide if they actually want to take the risk and purchase. Folk all have different buying strategies and some customers will take much longer to decide than others.
However, if your market is not a busy one, please don’t wait in the hope that by doing a few more markets people will begin to recognise you. If not enough people are seeing your stuff you could lose a lot of money waiting and hoping for the best – it ultimately becomes a simple numbers game so find a market that has regular, good footfall even if it is a little more expensive.
Price
Make your prices clear. If customers have to ask you how much your wares are, they may assume that they are too expensive and just walk on by. At the very least have one ATTRACTIVE price point that will get people approaching your stall eagerly. Like Silk Scarves £10. The rest of your items may be £40+ but at least the initial price point has the customer approaching your stall. As they are now there, they may begin to feel and touch your other items. This gives you a chance to interact with them and start your rapport-building process.
If you feel your prices are reasonable and in line with what others are selling similar items for, then it is not often a high price that will be putting customers off. If it is, they will tell you. Conversely, if your prices are too low, your products will be perceived as low quality and people won’t even bother to come and look.
A jewellery shop owner was leaving her manager in charge when she went on holiday. She told her “Add a 20% discount on the turquoise cabinet items.” because they weren’t selling at the current price. When she returned, she noticed that all the turquoise had sold. The manager commented, “Yes, the 20% increase worked extremely well and we sold out!“
Sometimes we need to ‘up’ the price to add perceived value.
One of the most powerful pricing techniques is volume pricing. So, if one item is £4 make buying multiples encouragingly cheaper, so 3 x £10. As long as you make it clear what the single item price is, then the multiple price point will be very appealing.
Tat (or Cheap and Nasty)
Cheap and of bad quality. [British, informal]
Sometimes at a craft fair or village market, you look at some stalls and wonder how on earth they can sell anything. Their stuff looks unattractive to you, e.g. homemade tea cosies and stuff that you really don’t think should be allowed onto a market anymore BUT strangely enough, these kinds of stalls do have an audience. Similar people to the makers who like these items also buy them. Not in large quantities to warrant a living but enough for the seller to make it worth their while to attend a market. So, never judge – that audience may not be yours and because of that, YOU may be the stall that is out of place at this event.
Use Selling Techniques
Occasionally you will need to consciously pull out the big guns and use selling techniques rather than rely on your wit and charisma.
Read our 6 tools from the Science of Persuasion – successful techniques that will help you move product:
Market Stall Selling Secrets: By A Psychology Expert
Why Customers Buy
Some of the reasons that people will buy something:
- To reduce hassle – that’s why TV remotes are in every home now.
- To gain information – the more informed we are the better we can perform.
- To be entertained – we all want to be entertained even if it is just by the stallholder!
- To get healthy – easy ways to maintain health are appealing.
- To generate nostalgia – we all like memories of the past.
- To provide reward – I can buy fudge today because I have done well in the week
- To show off social image or status – I must be cool because I am wearing my Hermès scarf
- To give back – I bought this wooden spoon because the man who made it gives all his profits to Help for Heroes
- To be part of a social group – I did all of my shopping a the farmers’ market this week
If you can see a way that your product fits in with any of the above reasons why customers buy, you are already halfway there.
Competition
Unbeknown to you there may be someone else selling exactly the same thing as you, who may be a well-known brand in the town you are trading in, and maybe selling the same item considerably cheaper. Unless they are also trading on the same market as you are, you will have no way of knowing this. Customers will eventually let you know but that may indeed be the problem you are facing without even being aware of it.
Also, don’t underestimate customer loyalty to another brand that is also trading on the market. They may not sell the exact same thing as you do, but if the customer feels that you are encroaching on their favourite stallholders business, they may avoid you completely for a long time.
Too Big / Bulky
We sold Peruvian Rugs and Indian clothes and interiors on certain markets. While the Indian clothes and interiors sold very well, the beautiful Peruvian rugs did not. I couldn’t understand it. They were competitively priced, international interiors were selling particularly well and they were absolutely beautiful! A few people would look at them but the problem was, they were just too heavy and bulky to carry home, particularly as they had come out to the market to have a wander about and enjoy the atmosphere, not with the intention of buying a rug!
Wrong Season
It may be that what you heard about Christmas Decorations best selling month being August, was not strictly correct. Or that your swimwear collection didn’t sell as well as you had planned at the Christmas Charity Fair event. Or even that your brilliant idea to sell soup at the farmers’ market did take off as well as you thought in July. Sometimes it is just a matter of what time of year you are intending to sell your products. Towards the end of the year, with the onset of Christmas shopping, nearly everything sells well. Soups don’t sell as well in summer. Period. When I started selling fudge in October I didn’t imagine that it would become my full-time business as I thought it was just something that people bought in winter. Not so. People buy it all year-round, and even more in summer if you attend summer events where people are in a ‘holiday’ and treat-buying mood.
Reconsider Your Plan
At the end of the day, and after reading all of our articles on www.MarketStallFacts.com and if you STILL don’t have any success selling your wares at a market then reconsider your initial plan. Before you ditch the idea altogether, simultaneously try and sell your wares online. If your product is really new and very niche, you may have more luck explaining the item online, where words explaining the benefits and features will not be limited to just a passing conversation.
Conclusion
You may ultimately be the only person in your town who would buy your product. Sometimes some things just don’t sell because people either don’t like them or have no need for them. If so, there is no shame in stopping your business in its tracks. In fact, this is an extremely brave move, particularly if you have invested a lot of time planning, making and organising this new business but if there is no demand for your goods, then there is no point in wasting any more time and money. Onto the next idea.
Adopt, Adapt or Disappear!
Good Trading!