Picking the Right Vendor Market as a Small Business | with Special Guest Rae (The Design Demon)

Chelsea:

We have a really exciting episode for you guys today. I know that it is only September, but y 'all, it is holiday season. If you're anything like me, you started at the beginning of this month. Most people probably not that early, but they're definitely already starting to think about it. So it is the beginning of holiday season, which means we are about to get into holiday market season, which is my favorite. I'm so excited. I'm going to be so poor by the end of this year. But we want to talk today about how to go about as a small business, finding a market that's actually worth your time - because not all markets are created equally. So we have a very special guest for you guys today who knows her stuff when it comes to markets and events and all that kind of stuff. You guys have heard her before if you've been listening to all the episodes of this podcast, it is Miss Rae from the Design Demon. Yay, and something really exciting that we want to say, Ray is now the sole owner of Feminist Magic Market. So if you are in the low country, Charleston area and you're a part of the market scene, then you probably know about Feminist Magic Market. It is a wonderful market that, how many times a year do you guys host?

Rae:
It's quarterly. We sprinkle in some things every once in a while, but aim for 4.

Chelsea:
I'm going to go ahead, Ray, could you actually describe and explain Feminist Magic Market since it is now all you.

Rae:
Feminist Magic Market, what started as a really small 20 -person, 20 -vendor market has grown to be about, on average, 90 vendors that we host. It's in the Park Circle neighborhood, in the space where we used to have the 20 -person small market, it's now a give -back garden. And that's where we host nonprofit organizations within the community.

So our goal is to always host and kind of cultivate a community of equality, diversity, and just a bunch of different vendors throughout the low country and surrounding neighborhoods. So like Savannah, Columbia, we have people from North Carolina, all that stuff. But yeah, it's a quarterly community -driven market.

Vivian:
And for those of you that are listening that perhaps you have either gone to, well, no, if you have participated, if you've been a vendor at the Feminist Magic Market and you're thinking, well, I know Rae, Rae's been around here for a while. She actually, you got involved back in 2022, right? Or was it beginning of 2023?

Rae:
Yeah, yeah, the very end of 2022 was like my training session, if you will. And then 2023 was when I started working with the previous runner. And then a month ago, a few weeks ago, I became the sole organizer. So it's been an eventful year and a half, two years.

Vivian:
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, what I love about this is because now Chelsea and I have gone a couple of times. Chelsea does not skip a Feminist Magic Market to save her life, but as someone who's attending, as an attendee, it is so well run. We go to markets all the time and I can tell you some of them seem a little chaotic.

Yours just kind of seems like, people know what they're there to do. The community knows and expects it to be in that park circle location, because it is such a nice walking area. There are parks nearby, there are restaurants nearby, lots of enough parking for everyone. Right. so I feel like it's one of those things where you are kind of like one of the top tier markets in the area that people look forward to going to.

Rae:
Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's lot of time on the back end of working out logistics as far as just... I literally use Adobe Illustrator to plot out the map. So if you're looking at it from like a bird's eye view, right? Each square is a different color and each color is representative of like a product category.

I do my best to be like, okay, no candle vendors can be right here because we already have a candle vendor. there has to be certain space. So I do my best to keep in mind the vendor experience, but also the shopper experience. You're not going to want to see all of the candle vendors in the same space, you know? I keep in mind foot traffic as far as like the experience of going booth to booth and kind of the vibe from person to person, as well as vendor, because you're not going to want to be a jewelry vendor right next to a jewelry vendor who's right across from a jewelry vendor. Literally no one wants that.

Vivian:
Let me tell you who knows that kind of stuff though. Fellow vendors, because I think as Chelsea mentioned The Design Demon, which is your jewelry business. I know you said eventually you'll branch out and do a little more with that. But I think because you go to markets all the time, there's nobody better to be managing a market and setting stuff up because you do take into consideration these little nuances, where, like you said, you don't want three jewelry vendors, you know, all lined up in a row. As a attendee, I appreciate that. I love that you know these things just to give us a better experience. So, Chelsea, what specifically do you want to ask Rae? Because I know you were saying our conversation today is going to be focused on how to go about finding markets, right?

Chelsea:
Yeah. I think let's start with what makes a market run poorly. And I know that's a very loaded question, but Rae, if you could give us an example of something that maybe vendors might not consider a big deal, but really ends up having such a strong impact on your sales because let's face it, a well -planned market has a huge impact on your sales - and a market that's not planned well is going to also have a huge impact on your sales.

Rae:
Yeah, I actually recently complained about, won't say which one, but on my TikTok, I recently complained about a poorly ran market and someone commented with a solid response saying, a good market runner is worth like every ounce of gold that you could ever think of. They're not good at running a market, then you're gonna have a crappy day or it's just not going to be as good as it could.

But to answer your question, I understand that I have my own biases and I know that I do things a certain way. So I need to like keep that in mind. But I thrive on knowing everything. I need the information. I am that girl who will look up the menu before we go to a new restaurant. I'll see what the parking situation is so I know where I'm parking.

I need to know all of the information, right? And so as a market runner, I will be sending out emails weeks in advance, multiple emails, just being like, hey, just a reminder, this is what's going on. Here's another thing that you can be thinking about all this stuff, right? If it's a windy market day, if I can see that it's going to be not the best weather, I'm like, here are ways that you can prep your booth, you know? And so I give too much information probably, but that is my way to approach it. So when you're going into a weekend and you're looking at the weather and it's questionable, know that some events are rain or shine. I've had events that the weather did not stop people from coming, which is great. I've had other events that completely flopped because of the weather, which has nothing to do with the quality of the market runner. Not at all. But, you know, the runner needs to either make the decision of, we're going to keep it but here are things that you can do to make sure that you are prepared. And as a market runner, I would then be like, hey, just because it's raining doesn't mean that we're not stopping. You all should come out with your umbrellas, yada, yada, yada. Have a good time in the rain, whatever. Sell it, right? Or cancel it. If you planned ahead and you had a rain date, be like, OK, this isn't safe for vendors. This isn't safe for the shoppers. We're going to go ahead and move it, and then communicate that.

Chelsea:
I feel like people don't realize how important communication is until they don't have it. Until they're dealing with a situation where they are not getting any communication and that's when they realize, you know what? I actually would prefer the person to bombard me with information because I know for you the market that we're not naming names, you didn't get any information.

Vivian:
Which, by the way, what is your TikTok? So everyone could go follow you on TikTok to get all of your grievances.

Rae Sumlin (12:00.232)
I am at The Design Demon.

You know, it was a $200 vendor fee, which is pretty exorbitant. Right. Usually when you're paying that much money, it's a for the venue and for the quality of service, right, that the market runner is providing for you. Right. The venue was riverfront park, super expensive to rent out. I have looked into it before, it is pricey. So I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. It's a festival. $200 - that's a lot, but you know what? Got to risk it sometimes. Right. So let's do it. This was the second year they did it, and the first time at riverfront park. Last time it was much smaller in scale. and so there was a lot of back and forth in my head. I was just like, screw it. We're going to do it. Then I proceeded to not really hear from them at all. I heard more from their marketing person than the runners themselves, which again, is very strange from someone who does markets as frequently as I do. I got a text message from their marketing person asking for promo photos and a bio and stuff, which that part is normal, asking for promo photos and bio, but getting a text message from someone who is not the runner, not normal.

Vivian:
Interesting. When we get offline, I'm going to ask you, I think I know who the marketing person is for this. I have an inkling. What you're saying is that they kind of ghosted people and you didn't hear from them until?

Rae:

Yeah. So I paid my fee in July, I think the first week of July, and this market was the first week of September. So that's a big space in between, right? Moving into it, I was like, okay, I probably won't hear from them for a little while. I got a notification from the marketing person, got tagged on posts, they were relatively active. Then as it got closer to the event, they were not very active on social media.

So I was like, did something happen with the marketing person? I don't know. There are other things marketing related that we can get into if you want that was just like, what's going on? Which I don't think was the marketing person's fault. I think it was the event runner's fault. But I digress. Going into the Thursday before, it's going to be a rainy weekend. Is it rain or shine? What's going on?

What's the load in time? What's the map? I didn't know literally anything. I just knew that it was at Riverfront Park. He just said, you know, we might delay it an hour.

Okay. I have other questions that I asked you. Long story short, it gets to seven o 'clock the night before, I reached out to the marketing person asking for this guy's number because he wasn't emailing me back. He wasn't messaging me back on Instagram. I didn't have any other form of communication with him. So I had to text this random lady. Hey, do you have this guy's number?

Then I texted him. He proceeds to call me. I am quite the millennial and I don't like answering the phone. I was just like, hey, can you please just text me or email me? I would really appreciate that. Then all he said was that load -in's at 8:30 tomorrow morning. I'm like, okay.

Vivian:
Which let me give you a different perspective on this too. So in my big girl job during my day job, we do events. They are different types of events. We're not selling a product, but we still have to be out there in community events. Actually we have the Scottish games. We set up a medical tent over at the Scottish games every year.

For me, I've been doing it so long, it's like clockwork, right? Especially for this particular event. However, maybe a couple of years ago, they switched teams as far as the person that was coordinating. And I remember thinking to myself, because the other person wasn't quite as communicative and so I kind of had to piece things together over the years, this person was spot on. When I tell you she called me months in advance to be sure that we were on the schedule and that we were good to go.

What it does is having all of the information as far as where the parking is situated, if they're going to give you a parking pass, what time you need to be there, can you set up the tents the night before, or is it the day of? How long are you committed to stay? Because for lot of these events, you can't start packing up early. You have got to be there the whole day.

And so, you know, these are small questions that you need to be asking upfront before you commit to something. She had everything so lined up for me that it helps me recruit volunteers for what I'm doing when I can lay out that information. What kind of ticks me off about the story you just told us. First of all, everybody knows in an event flyer, if you're having an event, you always put whether it's rain or shine. That's just clockwork. You put rain or shine right underneath or here's a second day in case it rains, right? It'll be rescheduled. The other thing is why are you advertising for an event without putting your contact information on it? Like most people are like "event organizer, name, cell phone number, email address."

Rae:
Or at least in the email when you say, hey, you've been accepted, give me your money, but here's how you can contact me. Yeah.

Chelsea:
Yeah. Well, and I also want to say, Rae, you had mentioned, and this is a really big deal. You had mentioned that people, event goers were commenting on Facebook, "Hey, are you still going to have this event?" And no one was responding to them. So this is a great example, communication, not just with vendors, but actual event goers. They need to know what's going on too. So Rae, I think you had said that you were responding to people.

Rae:
Yeah. So that was the other bit of marketing that was like, I had so much anxiety. I was not sleeping. I was looking through the comments because I was worried that people weren't going to show up because of the lack of communication. I was scrolling through the comments and there were, like Chelsea said, a crap ton of people saying, Hey, is this still happening?

They had posted to their Instagram stories saying it was rain or shine and here's a general info thing.

You have an event on Facebook that for whatever reason they had two separate Facebook events. I don't get what happened there, whatever. But one event had about 65000 people who had responded. The other event had 7 ,000 people, lots of people, right? They weren't using that as a way to talk to people. Their Instagram, I think just broke a thousand followers around the time of the event, which you should still post on Instagram and on Instagram stories, but you should still be posting on the event page where you have thousands of people.

I don't think they had shared their Instagram stories to their Facebook stories either. I was just like, no one's going to know. So I went through as many comments as I could without sounding annoying. I just took a screenshot from their Instagram story and I was like, yes, it's still on. Yes, it's still on. I mean, that was as much as I could do without being weird about it, I guess.

Vivian:
The marketing person in me is very aggravated by this whole situation simply because of one reason. An event that size, anytime you're doing a community event and there's a change of schedule or something, send it into the news stations. You know this, Rae. Live 5 News, ABC News 4, WCBD Channel 2. Those people would have gladly posted on their Facebook, right? Because it's a community event that lots of people were planning on going to. They would have gladly posted on behalf of the organization just to blast it out there and let people know, Hey, if you're considering going to X, Y, and Z festival, it's rain or shine. Right? So it irks me that they didn't capitalize on trying to get the word out there.

There's also such thing as training your audience as far as communication is concerned. And so for those of you out there, if you have not participated in an event, but you're considering it, I urge you go onto Facebook, go onto Instagram, go to google.com, type in the name of the event and see what populates for it from past events, look for photos, look for any posts they have made or just communication because I think that's going to be a good indication of the type of experience you might be up for as a vendor.

Chelsea:
I think that's a really big one when it comes to how they promote the event. This event had two separate Facebook event pages. They had an Instagram, they were kind of posting on Instagram. They weren't doing anything on their Facebook pages. that is a telltale sign that as a vendor, you might not do great at this event because they're not telling anyone it's there.

Vivian:
So one of the questions that you should ask them upfront is, what do you plan to do to promote this event? What do you plan to do for it? Their response is going to dictate whether or not I feel comfortable dropping $200 on a vendor fee to participate. At least then at that point, it was a decision I made fully on my own with all of the right information that I had.

Chelsea:
Yeah. I think asking these questions upfront, how they respond is also a really big deal because, let's say they don't know. If they just tell you, I don't know, that says a lot. But if they say, well, we're still figuring it out, working on it, but as soon as I get more information, I'll let you know. That says a lot more about who they are than just saying, I don't know.

Rae:
Yeah, I will say on a similar somewhat tangential note, good branding can be an easy way to fool people, right? Especially nowadays where you have really solid Canva templates to work off of that look 100 % professional, beautiful marketing, all that stuff. Just because it looks good does not mean that the quality is there from the back end.

They had solid branding. They had the following they did on the Facebook events. And so for me, I was just like, they know what they're doing, you know? Maybe this goes into how good branding can easily trick you.

I've even gone to even smaller, you know, $30 vendor fee markets where I was just like, their poster looks really good. They're sharing a lot. And I mean, that's not their fault, right? They're doing what they can at that rate. They have solid marketing, solid communication, sharing their vendors, yada, yada, yada. Just people don't always come out to those kinds of things, right?

Vivian:
All right, so to switch the conversation up, I'm kind of curious because I know Chelsea, you say this often. Chelsea will remind us very quickly that just because an event is popular does not mean that's going to be the right event for you. Talk to me about it from two angles. The first one being the angle that the event you just participated in that they weren't as communicative, all of that stuff. Was the audience the right target audience for the design demon or no?

Rae:
Yes and no. I had a lot of people who were like, wow, this is really great stuff. Gave me a lot of compliments. There was definitely people there who enjoyed my stuff, whether it meant purchasing it or just looking at it. But I did have a lot of negative experiences too. At one point, I had a woman who literally, and if you're listening, you need to go onto YouTube and watch because I'm about to make a facial expression. She was like maybe five feet outside of my vendor booth and she sees my nicer stuff and she goes (makes a disgusted faced) and walks off and I'm just like...

What am I supposed to do? Are you responding to my name? Are you responding to my product? What is that a response to? It's obviously something you're looking at that's in my booth, but like, okay, I am sorry. Like, go on. Please continue down your path. I do not need that. I gave her a stank face right back.

Vivian:
So then talk to me from the angle of the owner and the event organizer now of the Feminist Magic Market. How do you as an event organizer, do you provide that information upfront to potential vendors about who the target audience is or do they ask you? Is there any type of question that they can ask you to make sure that it's the right fit for them or what do you recommend?

Rae:
I've never had that question before. I'd be happy to answer it. You know, usually we see a lot of millennial to elder zillennials. Women who are more dog moms than they are child moms. We do see a lot of actual mothers walking around. We do see men. We do see people from the LGBTQ community. That is generally our target audience, slash the people who just come naturally.

I don't have anything online that says that it, and maybe I should. If anyone asked me, that's what I would say We've had a couple of people who are leather goods people and specifically men's leather goods. I don't think they do well because the majority of our shoppers are about 30 year old women. So unless they have more of a menswear aesthetic or they're shopping for someone else in their life, they're probably not going to shop at your booth.

To get a better idea as to how people do at the end of every market, I started sending out a feedback form and it can be completely anonymous if they choose for it to be. I kind of want it to be as anonymous as possible so that they'll get me their honest feedback.

I'll ask what vendor category are you under? What part of the event were you set up at? Because I also want to figure out how foot traffic is working. How was the load in process for you? How was your sales day for you? Was it what you were expecting? Was it not what you were expecting? Are you happy about that?

So I give them kind of the opportunity to voice like, you should make these changes. I have here and there been able to actually turn that into a change. Some of the changes are definitely things that need to happen. I just need to figure out how to logistically make it work. I never want to make, especially when it has so many people involved, I never want to make an event be like, that's as good as it's gonna get. You know, you're welcome to be setting up Feminist Magic. That's not how I want it. I want it to be, thank you for choosing us to market yourself. Why did you choose us? How did it go for you? And are you going to be back?

Vivian:
I see a lot of, and I'm not just saying this because you're our friend. This is a real life compliment on a couple different things. The first one is what I absolutely love about the Feminist Magic Market is that you have figured out a way to kind of get people to promote the market alongside with you. So I know you do promoting, you were talking about earlier, I think you're some promoting right now on Facebook to be sure you get enough people there for the next one. As a vendor, that's what people want, right? I'm aligned with an event that's gonna make sure to drive the people there for us. The other thing is you have that nice big arch that is a beautiful photo op for people. Chelsea and I have taken a picture of it before and I think it just helps because then year to year you have this accumulation of people that are taking a picture next to this thing that says in very big letters, feminist magic market. It's just a thing now for people. So I love that you do that. And then the other one is just that, I feel like experience wise, it's definitely one of the nicer markets to go to because you have such an array of different vendors. I love seeing that plant truck out there, the school bus that's a seller. Love it. I love that we could get all the jewelry.

I love that. I know we met a new vendor last year, Chelsea. She was a, I think a consignment shop. So she had some clothes, shoes, Chelsea had bought some shoes, pottery. The Leopard Lady.

Rae:
Yeah, that was one of our scholarship booths too. So hopefully she applies again.

Vivian:
Awesome. Okay, so tell us about the scholarship booth.

Rae:
The scholarship booth. Like I said earlier, we used to have folks set up in the backyard. As we grew, we still had backyard spaces, but they were table spaces. So they were smaller in footprint. So therefore they were cheaper. It was more affordable for people who are still getting into the market scene because I think at the time tent spaces were like $60 and then our table spaces were 35 or 40, something like that. Which the 35, 40 is already kind of in the higher range as far as like just normal pop up markets are concerned. 60 and above is definitely higher up and we recognize that. So that was just more of a way for smaller businesses who don't really know how they're going to do all that stuff, how they can get their foot in the door. Right. But with the feedback forms, we were seeing that people weren't getting a lot of traffic back there. And so we were like, while I like having the space for them, and like the option to have a cheaper booth space for them, they're still not making money. And I don't want to be like, yeah, apply to our table spaces, even though you might not make as much money as you're hoping. That's kind of crappy, if you know they're not gonna be making a lot of money.

So I was like, we're gonna turn it into the give back garden. So we can still have people back there. We can still entice people to go through the magic portal. And that's where our restrooms are as well. So it already has kind of a natural flow, but now we can have nonprofits out there. So they're not paying anything to be there, and more people are inclined to go back there just to kind of hang out and see what's going on.

We still don't have the option for the actual small businesses who want a way to vent but can't necessarily pay the $70 vendor fee that we're at now. So that's where scholarship booths came into play. Unfortunately, with all the transitioning going on behind the scenes, we weren't able to do it for the September market, but we were able to do it for March and June. I'm going to be bringing it back in November.

That is a fully free space. They just have to set it up themselves. I have a tiny car, so I can't bring like a tent and stuff for them. But that is what the scholarship is.

Vivian:
And so they would have to apply for it. Is that correct? Like you take a max number of people for that?

Rae:
Yeah, so we are trying to figure out the best way to do it because...I'll just use myself as an example. I've been doing markets for three years now. I don't need a scholarship booth. I'd like to save money on a vendor fee. If I really wanted to test the waters, I could apply for it.

So, it has to be one of your first three markets in the low country. Well, ever, not just the low country, because again, I could be applying from Savannah with the same resume. They have to be newcomers as well as still have a solid business plan. We don't want a bake sale situation. So we still treat it like a normal application in that regard.

Chelsea:
Rae, I want to ask you, what advice do you have for vendors who are unsure about a specific market. They've never done it before, they're trying to pick what works best for their small business? What advice do you have?

Rae:
I mean, we've talked about it a lot, right? Marketing really does matter. If you're looking at a big event, or maybe not even that big of an event, just like a local pop -up, right? If they're not constantly sharing what vendors are gonna be there, I feel like that's a red flag. I would also go visit it first before you apply and be like, what's the foot traffic like? What's the general audience like? What are the other vendors doing? Take a second and be friendly and network. I hate networking, but network with a vendor and be like, hey, I also have a business. What do you think of this market? Just experience it. I think it's really important.

If you're unable to experience it, say it's something that's only an annual event, right? Especially now that we're going into the holiday season, you only have Christmas events that happen once a year, right? Look at the past year's events, see what vendors were attending, whether it means people who were tagging the market, the market that had shared, all that kind of stuff. If you know them personally, reach out. If you don't know them personally, follow them for a little while, see what their vibe is and if they seem open, and reach out to them. I think it really is just a matter of Googling it, looking at what people have tagged it with, talking and networking with the other vendors that are there. Going and experiencing it is very big for me. But you could do all of those things. It could still be a crappy event for you.

Which is fine. That is kind of the name of the game - not every single thing works for every single person's business. There's a local market that happens in Jones Island that a lot of my friends love it. And I've done it and never done well at it, which is fine. You know, it's either it's not my clientele or it's just not what people want to see over there. I don't know. But I have accepted that.

I think other people are like, well, why can't I make it work over here? It's just not your thing, boo boo. It's okay. You know? You're winter, and you're trying to wear fall colors. It's okay.

Chelsea:
I want to say social media is a really powerful tool, y 'all. So if something went wrong at a market, you will find information on it. I promise you. I'm thinking of, was it Riverfront Revival? It wasn't a market, it was a music festival. I barely heard anything about it because it's not my jam, it's not my kind of music, so I wasn't following it. And I still managed to get so much information about how bad the parking was and about how bad the entire experience of trying to get in and out was.

Rae:
I think it was High Water, wasn't it? The one that Hozier was at?

Vivian:
It was High Water, that's what it was, yeah.

Chelsea:
was it high water? That's what it was. It was high water. Again, not my kind of music, not my vibe. So I wasn't even looking for this information. And I still managed to learn that, ooh, not well planned out in that sense. So I think if you are specifically looking for information, you will find it.

Rae:
And again, it depends on the size of it, right? Like I have, as I have mentioned, I have an ego. And so I Google feminist magic as much as I can. It's a daily task for me. And so I'm like, what are people saying about me? I go on Reddit, I go on YouTube. I look at the hashtag on Instagram and TikTok, you know, like, okay, maybe not every day. That does sound a little insane. I'm not that crazy.

Vivian:
Tip here, actually do a Google alert for it. You could do a couple of different ones for it. Then it pings your phone. I've been doing it for years on my big girl job because sometimes they'll write articles about us without coming through the approval process. I set it up a long time ago and sure enough, it'll get pinged every once in a while, whenever something pops up. I still think Googling on your own helps. So you still want to do that intermittently in the meantime, it's a good way to kind of keep a pulse on it.

I think the other part of it too is at some point as a small business owner, I'd imagine that you would recommend that people know their numbers really well before they decide to participate in any event. It allows me to say, even if I make zero sales at that market, I'm only out, let's say $200 or I'm out 150 or whatever that is. Am I willing to take that, you know, plunge and eat that cost? Worst case, I probably will make at least a couple sales. So it might not be that bad, but, I think knowing your numbers just helps with being able to decide if you're willing to take on that risk of whatever event you're going to participate in.

Rae:
Exactly.

Chelsea:
Knowing your numbers is going to let you know if it was a good or bad event. Just because you sold some stuff doesn't mean that it was a good event. You need parameters to be able to say, yes, this event went well.

Rae:
Yeah. I mean the event that I've been complaining about this whole time. That event, I profited at it. I have a certain sales goal for like hourly in my head. I didn't reach that, but I still profited, right? I'll never do it again. It still wasn't worth it for me. Right, and other people have different perspectives on that, which is totally valid. There's a vendor Facebook group that a lot of us are in and someone had asked basically that question, what monetarily value makes an event worth it for you. Someone said that if the event fee is four times their lowest priced products, they're not going to do it. I'm like, I don't know where that number comes from but you know your stuff, I guess. My lowest price item is $3, so I can't go off that. Yeah, it needs to be free, I guess.

Chelsea:
Thank you, Ray, for bringing up the point that monetary value does not necessarily mean you had a successful event. Like you said, you profited, you are still not going back to that market. We had had this conversation with
Jessie from Southern Curiosities when she was on the podcast. She had said, I might not meet my monetary goal at a market, but I still had really great conversations with potential customers and I still had really great conversations with vendors. So I still consider that market a success, even if I didn't meet the monetary value that I wanted to meet, that doesn't mean the entire day was a bust.

Rae:
Exactly. Yeah. I had a separate event over this past weekend that I have the exact same opinion on it. I profited. I didn't profit as much as I would have wanted to, but I still enjoyed myself. I still enjoyed the people I had met, got to hang out with all that stuff. So I would still do it again in the future. It really is kind of a balance of quality of life with markets as well.

Vivian:
To that conversation about quality of life, there have been a lot of vendors that because we live in the South and it's super hot, basically just opted out of not doing summer events because they decided, I cannot make enough money to get me out in this heat to a point where I'm practically like passing out from the heat.

Rae:
Yeah, I was one of those vendors. I did the June Feminist Magic, the Pride Feminist Magic, and I'm like, one and done. I'm done. I'll be back when it's sub 90 degrees.

Vivian:
Well, I think this conversation has been super valuable and we definitely want to encourage all of you out there, if you are in the South Carolina region, even if you're in the Southeast and you want to go and look up the Feminist Magic Market that takes place in Park Circle, North Charleston, South Carolina, then please do so. Rae is the event organizer for that and I'm sure she would be willing to answer any questions you guys have. But also if you are just someone that lives around here in South Carolina, please come out to the next one. It is just such a good time and you could get a lot of shopping done, I promise you.

Tell us where can we find out more about the Feminist Magic Market?

Rae:
So Feminist Magic Market's new website is FeministMagicMarketCHS .com. There's an email subscriber link at the bottom and I am going to be utilizing email marketing. I will be sharing all the updates as far as when application windows are open, market news, sometimes I'll do some vendor spotlights, all that fun stuff.

We will have our Instagram and Facebook listed there because, a little bit of tea, I'm gonna have to be changing the name, the handles on those after our September market. So I won't say it here just in case people listen to it afterward but it'll be on the website.

You can find The Design Demon across social media @TheDesignDemon and on her website: https://shopdesigndemon.com

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