How to Ensure Better Success at a Flea Market or Farmer's Market

You can determine the level of success you have in selling on Flea Markets or Farmer's Markets! The first thing is to have a product or products that people actually want to buy in the first place. But there are ways you can improve your sales percentages on these markets. Here are a few tips that should help you to increase your chances of success.

On the day:

1. Plan to arrive early. The organizers usually give a window of time for traders to set up, there is nothing worse than feeling stressed and sweating to get everything set up and ready whilst customers are already trying to purchase items off your table. Rather be early at the start of the window period given by the organizers for setting up. If you finish early you can always go buy a coffee from one of the traders..
2. Decide if you want to actually sell your stuff or not. Seriously! You could sit in the back of your stall or in a corner reading a book or texting/SMS'ing people all day while assuming people will buy something if they like it, or you can stand up and sell your products to people. People don’t usually come to flea markets to buy stuff they NEED, they come to see if there’s anything they WANT. It’s your job to show them why they want something. Personally when I do flea markets, I never sit down unless it’s a really slow period. I don’t hover over people though, I just re-arrange or neaten the table or sort through excess stock, something menial so people don’t feel they’re interrupting if they have a question. Standing behind your table makes people more comfortable asking a question about a product, and thus, more comfortable buying from you. If a person browses through things for a while, or fingers an item like a bracelet, I’ll casually mention they are welcome to try it on if they’d like or recommend a pair of earrings or pendant I think might be a good match. Be honest! If someone tries something on that doesn’t look good on them, clashes with their face shape or hair color, say it! But recommend something new in its place. They’ll appreciate your honesty and be more inclined to try more things on. Now, rather than deciding WHETHER to buy or not, you have them deciding WHICH product to get. And that’s the key to a sale.
3. Unless you have a lot of stock on multiple tables or it’s a busy flea market, you probably won’t need someone else there all day. It’s more fun if you can get a friend to help you out, but it isn’t necessary. It DOES help though, to have friends pop in throughout the day either to chat, break the monotony if things are slow, or watch your table and attend to any customers when you have to go to the bathroom, grab something to eat or even just get out for a short break and browse other stalls. It’s better not to ask the trader next to you to watch your goods while you take a break. It’s difficult for both of you because you’re entrusting them with your things and they’re stretched enough trying to handle their own business. Plus, with no one behind the table, you’ll lose potential sales anyway. If you have no choice and have to ask them though, realise they’re doing YOU a favor and perhaps bring them back a bottled water or hot dog or something.
4. Packing up: Be careful to watch the money. This can be just as frantic a time, because you might have been holding out for the last possible customer or sale, and there’s a panic to get everything out of there before the market closes or, if it’s an outdoor market (which is a great feature of Sunny South Africa) before the rain comes down. 

Lastly, treat a market not as a chore, but a joy. The kinds of people who are traders are usually lovely personalities (although they can be very busy, stressed and unable to chat), and it is a wonderful outing and a chance to meet the people who really LOVE your stuff (or hate it, in which case you might need to think of a new business!). It’s a very good leveler, and will also help to give you a good idea of which of your products are “hot” and which are not. If your aim is eventually to get into retail stores or even have your own branded retail store, being “out there” on a market could be one of the best market research tests you can do.  If you want an excellent checklist for preparing for a Fleamarket, check out yesterday's post here.

Have fun!

How to See Opportunities Others Miss

We’ve all seen a great business idea start from scratch and either felt we could have done it or perhaps we even got the idea first and did nothing or told someone else and they ran with it!

Here are some things you can do now to prepare yourself so that you’re ready to grab the opportunity that comes past your nose next time:

• Practice looking at the details, beyond what’s on the surface. Opportunities are in the details.
• Train yourself to go the extra mile. Be prepared to do the things others couldn’t be bothered with. There’s very little competition in the second mile.
• Don’t take complaints personally, rather learn from them. Be thankful and appreciative when people complain about your business. They give you an opportunity to improve, to fine-tune, to hone your business. From the outset, when Beautiful Bracelets started, I listened carefully to comments and criticisms which gave me an opportunity to improve the product. As a result, to date there have been no complaints or returns. But if there are, I will learn from that situation.
• Embrace change, don’t run from it. This will give you an opportunity to see opportunities that others don’t.
• Be flexible and adaptable. Someone who is rigid or set in their ways is more likely to miss opportunities whereas research has shown that creative solutions and innovative thinking are more likely a result of flexible thinking and adaptive responses to situations. Rigid thinking seldom solves a problem.

If you follow these tips, then hidden opportunities will attract your attention like a magnet.. Opportunities are everywhere. The trick is to recognise them, and having done so, pursue them!

Disaster Creates Opportunities

Valley of Desolation, Camdeboo National Park (Source: www.southafrica.net)

I really believe the best online businesses that will be the big names within the next 5 years are probably business ideas or concepts that no-one has even thought of up till now. As new situations arise and develop, and things happen that have never happened before, entire new industries will develop (at one time the internet was an “event” that had never happened before and now some of us depend on it for our livelihoods).There have been some amazing ideas even in South Africa that have sprung up.

Businesses can happen out of situations of great distress. For example, the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa has (sadly) been a massive source of prosperity for new (and old) businesses in South Africa. Some of the “old” business ideas have been the funeral parlours. AVBOB is probably the best known of them, established in Bloemfontein in 1921, it is probably a little known fact that the company is now one of the most successful in South Africa, with net income in the tax year 2011/12 posted at R820million (an increase from R456,6million in the previous year) whilst total assets increased over the same period by 19.5% to R6.2billion (see Chairman’s Report). I was actually shocked by these figures, particularly the increase year on year which indicates that the AIDS pandemic is far from being “under control” which our Government is very quiet about. I cannot imagine another reason for the doubling in turnover of a funeral service business, since South Africa has not had a sudden outbreak of War or other major catastrophe. Scary.

Another business in South Africa which was probably much needed previously, but became a viable business as a result of the sheer numbers of deaths due to the AIDS pandemic. I heard (from a reliable source, I once interviewed the Founder's Personal Assistant many years ago when she was looking for a career move!) this business was started as a result of a conversation between two people in a pub. One of them had a relative who’d passed away (around 1998) and was lamenting that he needed to repatriate the body to another country bordering South Africa for a burial according to local traditions but was struggling with the logistics, being unable to find anyone who could help. This birthed a new business where the founder secured deals with all the local insurance companies providing insurance policies, and started the first specialized business handling all the logistics for people who needed this service. It is a thriving business with its head office in Midrand, 21^st Century Life, now with 25 branches across the country.

If you don’t ask, you won’t receive: Ask God for a new business idea, but when you get it, don’t speak about it: ACT swiftly and DO it!