How much would you pay for your pitch indoors?

Nevie

Hey peeps. Trying to flesh out a business idea. Can i ask anyone interested in having a stall at an indoor market how much they would ideally like to pay or artists to display their work. Be honest! I'm trying to be fair for everyone, myself included, to encourage us handy folk to make a living! Look forward to your opinions.

drunkmonkey

100 euro a day roughly, it all depends on location, footfall etc.

Nevie

May i ask what your product is Drunk Monkey? And anyone else feel free to list their product/creation!

tombull82

what is the location? Have a look at pennylane in carlow. They have setup an indoor market over the last year or so. Might give you idea's.

Acoshla

It would depend on a few things, I've had stalls at markets ranging from €10 to €50, obviously the lower the cost the better. I make cupcakes, have only done markets that were 10am - 2pm or 1pm - 5pm etc, for a full day market I would hope for maybe €50-75. Some markets include public liability insurance, a bonus for those of us who do markets infrequently and don't have a full years insurance ourselves.

Nevie

Thanks for all that guys, keep it coming. I'm trying to set up a fee system whereby the fee reflects what your selling. I suppose percentage based would be best. It is unfair to expect someone to pay the same for cupcakes as it is art or more expensive pieces.

Also, it might be an idea to provide a grace period for the insurance, or, as i've been told from a source that if the building is covered for Public liability then it is superfluous for the stall holders to have it. Only where it would be food however would you be expected to have it for product liability maybe!

tombull82

Can you not have everyone sign a waiver saying that it is up to them to provide their own insurance?

Its upto them after that?

Nevie

I'm trying to be fair, money is tight with everyone and i dont want silly pieces of paper which mean nothing only robbery. I detest the bull that has been created all in the name of business. Its the biggest barrier to entry (if thats the right term, i had to did business in college my final year and was expected to have a 4th year level proficiency even though i did law) All i see are barriers. I look at application forms for grants for business accounts its ridiculous. You need to spend a fortune getting things off the ground and then jumped upon for rates etc etc etc.... I sometimes think its all too much and just want to walk away from it but i have a bloody good idea and im not letting bull get in my way!

Maybe i should have a sign up that says "Everyone for themselves" see how far we'd get

Nevie

Any farmers out there could give me an idea how much they pay for a pitch How much would you pay to have your stuff sold on your behalf for the day? Enabling you to go to the next market for yourself. Again peeps Im not hungry but will need to realistically cover my own costs. What is acceptable for fresh produce? Candles, honey, cheese, etc.

mazza

Nevie wrote: »

I suppose percentage based would be best. It is unfair to expect someone to pay the same for cupcakes as it is art or more expensive pieces.

Why do you feel this scenario is unfair?

I think you are making this judgement based on the asking price stallholders may have on a given item, rather than the total turnover they achieve in a given day.

For example, you can stand there all day with items priced in the hundreds of euros all round you and sell nothing. At the same time, the stall selling cupcakes could be selling a couple of hundreds of items priced at a few euro each. Who should be paying more rent?

From my limited experience, people are far more reluctant to buy more expensive items (higher end clothes, art etc) at a market than they would be in a shop. When spending more money, you want to maybe think the purchase over, have some bricks and mortar presence to return to if you're unhappy with an item, try it on in a changing room etc.

Small, limited risk impulse purchase work best at markets as far as I've seen - the guys selling bread, veg, small tasty snacks have the highest turnover at the farmers markets.

I'm not sure exactly how you would see a percentage based fee structure work, but wouldn't it rely on stallholders honestly stating their turnover on a given day? Is that realistically going to happen?

The key point I noted when watching the guy who organised the market was: your client is the stallholder, not the end customer. His primary focus was on encouraging newbie stallholders to sign-up, keep the existing ones, with his secondary job being to promote the market to the public.

Once all his stalls were full and he was getting paid, it was job done. So, you'd see him encouraging no-hope ideas for stalls, getting them signed up, generally it would take them 4/5 weeks before they gave up if it didn't work for them, by then he'd be encouraging another crop of wannabe stallholders who were interested.

Cynical, but that was the way it went - survival of the fittest stallholders who attracted the general public to visit and pull in what money you could from the no-hopers until they give up and move on.

I'm not sure how commercially you plan to run this, but hope is of some use...

Nevie

Mazza,

You've been a great help. I'm a bit of a softie so i'm going to have to harden up a bit if i expect to do well in business. Your points were very clear and have made a big impact on my decisions. Thanks for laying it out as you did. Any more advice is greatly welcomed.

Acoshla

Mazza you hit the nail on the head really. I've done markets where I've been opposite people selling engraved slate slabs, pieces of art, etc., and they stand there all day with only passing interest in their work, no big sales, while my table has sold out and had a crowd in front of it for a large part of the day, so even though the other stallholder might have €1000 worth of work they might go home with all of it whereas I'll go home with almost no leftover stock and €200 in my pocket.

ToxicPaddy

Would you not offer different pitches of different sizes?

I'm sure someone selling a few small trinkets/jewellery etc wouldn't need the same amount of space that say someone selling say art would need.

As Mazza said, its up to the stall holder to assess their market and sell their products to their potential customers, all you are doing is providing a space for them to do it and advertising the market..

You will always see markets where some stalls in markets are always there with the same people selling the same products, they have a customer base and know their markets and you will see others changing hands over and over as people are either trying new products or not selling at all and end up closing it up.

If its going to be in Dublin, let me know and I'm always interested in visiting these markets as you always find something interesting at them and one indoors appeals even more..

Nevie

Interesting idea ToxicPaddy. I'm based in Clare. But all of your helpful advice, who knows where i could end up?

delllat

% based rent would be too hard to count imo ,ud drive yourself crazy wondering how much your being robbed every day (i would anyway )

a system like that would mean ud need to be there from opening to closing time watching and counting,plus u dont know everybodys overheads so ul never know his actual profit

and when people start paying hardly any rent you cant really accuse of them of lying and maintain any kind of business relationship for the future

theres no way you could keep an eye on 20-40 stalls at once and know how much profit theyre making on every sale

i would concentrate on renting by square meter ,some sellers will make more than others per square meter but thats just business/life and you wouldnt have to be relying on peoples honesty /dishonesty to get your wages every month

Nevie

@Dellat: Good idea also. Metering out stall space.

I had been thinking about being the shop keeper so to speak. I'm starting out small, with my own stuff in a premises and wondered if people were amenable to leaving their product in the shop to be sold by me? Like a country market for instance. It would mean more labeling/packaging on the part of the producer but it also means that the producer has the time to have their stall elsewhere. Has anyone had any experience of this?

I was going to go with % for displaying art, or a very small fee on a weekly basis, and then have the stalls at €10, €15, €20 etc.

delllat

Nevie wrote: »

@Dellat: Good idea also. Metering out stall space.

I had been thinking about being the shop keeper so to speak. I'm starting out small, with my own stuff in a premises and wondered if people were amenable to leaving their product in the shop to be sold by me? Like a country market for instance. It would mean more labeling/packaging on the part of the producer but it also means that the producer has the time to have their stall elsewhere. Has anyone had any experience of this?

I was going to go with % for displaying art, or a very small fee on a weekly basis, and then have the stalls at €10, €15, €20 etc.

a fixed price is what id go for anyway ,

if u go for say 10% of everyones takings some guy could say hes only sold 2 t-shirts all day for a fiver each and hand you a €1 euro coin at the end of the day,would you be happy with that ?

charging a fixed price would get rid of that element anyway

Nevie

Gosh, i'm going to have to stop seeing the best in people if im to survive this business Dellat. I'll have to stop my people pleasing and look out for myself.

its getting closer. Ive decided to run with a swap shop type thing for the moment as it allows me to build the business from scratch and not have to invest money i don't have in stock! It will be sectioned into clothes for a start, but I may look into other bits n bobs, usually found at the indoor markets, but with a local twist if possible. I wouldn't accept a stall holder with plastic toys and the like, but would bring in a guy that made hand made toys. However, encouraging people to buy this rather than the generic products may prove tough as they are generally more expensive (not unwarranted) but this is something i hope to build on. Encouraging people to buy local. HOwever as it has been said by Mazza below my client is the stall holder and not the ultimate customer so it will be their job to sell their products, not me, and i'm covered with my costs.

patrickspicture

nevie,
hi. i may be completly wrong but it seems to me you want to set up a shop to sell other people products for them allong with your own things. this would be a consigment shop not a market and you would charge a commision on the sales instead of a flat rate because you are selling the product on behalf of the stall holder.

like i said i could be completly wrong but that is the impression i got from reading the posts.

patrick

lyndak082

drunkmonkey wrote: »

100 euro a day roughly, it all depends on location, footfall etc.

100euro a day!! thats a bit much?? im soon to be starting at one of these indoor markets and its 20euro a week (sundays only..) there is a recession on too ya know