Round She Goes is run by Emma Morris. Emma loves vintage clothes, designer bargains, op shop treasures and getting crafty. Round She Goes brings all of these favourite things together.
You’ve booked in your stall, culled the wardrobe, told all your friends to come and visit you, picked out your outfit to wear on market day (okay, that last one might just be me), but now it’s time to talk market day strategy!
Here are the top five tips I’ve picked up over the years of meeting and observing lots and lots of stallholders, to maximise your sales on market day.
- Make your stall look pretty: The more effort you put into making your stall look great, the better your chances of sales and earning cash. Tablecloths, neat hangers, price tags on everything go a long way with customers. Put your most eye catching item at the front of your rack. Make up some signs like ‘nothing over $30 on this rack’ (or whatever your price point might be) or make a sign that lists the types of sizes and brands you’ve got.
- Be nice: The market is open for 5 hours – make every minute count! Stand up if you can, jooj your racks and clothes, say hello and smile to all the customers that you can. People come to Round She Goes because they love the atmosphere and the friendly vibe and they are there to shop! What doesn’t attract customers? Looking bored. Talking to your co-stallholder and ignoring the customer completely – staring at a mobile phone screen without looking up, reading a book or knitting – never attracts customers. It’s much more fun to chat to customers!
- Use an App on your Smartphone to take card payments! It goes without saying that you’ll need a float of change for cash takings, but customers also love the convenience of paying on their credit cards. It’s simple: if you are able to accept PayPal and Visa/Mastercard payments for your items, you will make more money. This needs to be organised in advance, you can’t just download the app, You need to be approved at least a week before the market happens. The two apps that are readily available are PayPal Here and Square.
- Don’t bring EVERYTHING you own just because you hope it might sell. Bring you best stuff and display it nicely. Your stall space is limited to 2 racks and a table and you want customers to be able to access what you’ve got. Racks so over loaded with wire hangers that customers can’t flick through are a turn off. A better strategy is to have a bargain bin for people to rummage through but keep everything else clutter free.
- Price everything but be prepared to negotiate as it is a market. Sometimes it’s easy to think something is worth a high price tag just because we paid a lot for it, but that might have been 20 years ago and people’s perception of value has changed. If it’s a great brand, classic cut and made of beautiful fabric then fair enough. But fast fashion does not retain it’s value, so be realistic when setting your prices.
