Vendor markets can be a goldmine for small businesses - OR a total waste of your time, money, and inventory. Over the years, we've learned there are a few red flags you can look for to help you determine whether participating in a specific fair, pop-up, craft show, farmers market or community event will be worth the deposit and time commitment. If you sell products, plan to promote your small business at these types of events, or are gearing up for the busy holiday shopping season - this conversation may save you from making an expensive mistake!
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Chelsea (00:07) unless you're an alien like Vivian.
Vivian (00:09) Yeah, and then I just don't have that.
Chelsea (00:11) No. She's just doing everything.
Vivian (00:13) That's right
Chelsea (00:14) Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet, we mean small own business. We don't mean SOB.
Vivian (00:26) Listen, and we know that as a small business owner, you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other, I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea (00:45) Our commitment here at the SOB Marketing Podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, promoting your business, and then what doesn't really work.
Vivian (00:56) And
Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
Chelsea (01:01) Vivian, how many vendor markets did you go to this year? So far.
Vivian (01:05) So far I twenty twenty six, I'll be honest, I have not been on my game. So this has been a very strange year for me. I don't know if it's a strange year for anyone else out there.
Chelsea (01:16) I feel like this year has been weird.
Vivian (01:17) Yeah. Weird vibes. It's definitely weird vibes. I feel like the aliens are coming back soon, so
Chelsea (01:23) I mean coming back for you. They dropped ya off. They gotta come pick you back up. Yeah, okay.
Vivian (01:30) It's about time. They're like we've we've left her there forty something years. She's wreaked enough havoc on the world.
Chelsea (01:38) Yeah. Time to go pick her up again.
Vivian (01:40) All right, how many have you gone to?
Chelsea (01:42) great question. Maybe like three
Vivian (01:46) Okay. And what what different markets ha do you enjoy going to, Chelsea?
Chelsea (01:51) I love a good farmers market. Okay. I love some of the established ones here in the Lowcountry, you know, like Feminist Magic Market. I love Yall Mart in Columbia, South Carolina.
Vivian (02:03) Y'all Mart is the oddities one, you guys. And we one time took our mother to it. I'm sure she was instantly regretting accepting the invitation. She's probably like, wait, what? These earrings are made out of animal teeth?
Chelsea (02:19) Yeah, what's the problem? I bought a pair. It's normal, it's fine. It's fine. I couldn't enjoy any of the leather goods because my mother was there. Anyway.
Vivian (02:34) So we today are going to be talking about red flags for vendor markets. If you are in a type of business that could benefit from participating in vendor markets, you're thinking great, this is a good avenue for me to go spend money to set up, put a booth out there, have people walk through and be able to purchase my products.
This is what we're gonna talk about. Yes. You know, how how can you spot the good ones and how can you spot the bad ones?
Chelsea (03:07) Exactly. Not all vendor markets are created equally and you gotta be very cognizant about what events you're going to.
Vivian (03:17) let me also just say that in all the years of marketing, I feel like there is an insane surge of people that are confident they can put on markets.
Chelsea (03:36) that's facts.
Vivian (03:37) Facts. And great, we love having more opportunities to be able to go out and promote small businesses. However, we don't want you guys to minimize the amount of effort, the amount of time, the amount of money that goes into participating in these. Okay. And so your time is valuable and every dollar that you spend in your setup.
That's a dollar that you're taking away from doing another marketing opportunity. Okay. From running Facebook ads or, you know, maybe doing a print ad. So we just want to be sure that you can spot red flags.
Vivian (04:22) Red flags really quick. Yes.
Chelsea (04:24) Absolutely. Before we get started though, Vivian, I do have a marketing hot take.
Vivian (04:29) You know what I've noticed?
Chelsea (04:30) What?
Vivian (04:31) You've quit doing the sound effects for this podcast. my
Chelsea (04:33) Oh, oh my God. Ok, time for the marketing hot take
Vivian (04:36) Actually
somebody wrote in and they were like, We miss her sound effects.
Chelsea (04:41) Oh, did they? My Bad.
I'm so sorry. I'll bring them back. Marketing hot take. there are no stupid questions. Okay. Okay. When you are trying to pick a vendor market where you're trying to feel it out and see if it's worth your time, do not feel embarrassed and do not let anyone make you feel bad because you're asking too many questions.
Your questions are valid. You just want to make sure that you're spending your money and your time wisely. And anyone that's trying to make you feel bad about asking these questions, honestly, in my opinion, that's a red flag.
Vivian (05:24) I agree with you wholeheartedly. I also want to encourage everybody to be really great communicators. And part of being a great communicator means listening and reading. And so there are people that put markets on that have the information available on a website or on an FAQ section of, you know, their document that they're circulating to get people interested in participating. So
Just be sure that you're reading all the information and you're not, you know, going in asking maybe some questions that have already been cover covered. Yeah. So just be an effective communicator. Listen well, read all the information and then gather your thoughts. Have a list of questions that you can ask and send them off. And don't feel any shame, like Chelsea said, in asking these questions because if you're devoting your time to it,
You have a right to to get all the information up front.
Chelsea (06:25) Absolutely, yeah. I like how Vivian kinda did say there were some stupid questions though.
Vivian (06:31) No, no, I don't think there are stupid questions. What I am saying is like from an event organizer's perspective, I would like to think that any good market is going to anticipate questions ahead of time. And they're gonna have information available, answers to those questions available. And so I just want you to be sure that when you're out there researching, that you're reading all the FAQs and stuff. And if there's still
a question that you have regarding something that was said, or the way they typed it wasn't very clear, then yes, one hundred percent ask. And Chelsea, you know me better than anybody else. I'm the one that annoys people with all the questions I have.
Chelsea (07:16) She sure has alot of questions.
Vivian (07:18) It's the aliens. They I mean they want it's
Chelsea (07:20) Wanna know what's going on?
Vivian (07:21) probing. I am an alien. I do like to probe.
Chelsea (07:24) know what? That explains so much. Vivian, let's go ahead and get started. What's your first red flag?
Vivian (07:33) Okay, so the first red flag that I see is that there's just no organization. Okay. So if your first impression of reaching out to somebody because you're interested in participating in an event is that they just are unorganized, right? If they're if you kind of get the feeling that they're scatterbrained or they're leaving out a lot of information.
if they don't have, you know, maybe like a flyer with all of the details in there about setup, right? Or takedown or what their requirements are of vendors, then that may be a red flag.
Chelsea (08:18) Vivian, I think my biggest red flag, or at least the thing that I think of first in this conversation, is markets that don't have like an algorithm or a specific way of picking which vendors get to join their market.
Chelsea (08:37) A good vendor market is going to be diverse.
Vivian (08:42) Okay.
Chelsea (08:43) And if you if
the event organizer, if the event is just accepting everyone that applies without even looking at who's applying or anything like that, then you could end up three candle makers right next to each other, you know? Or it could be all jewelry. You have to be very specific about the people you're letting in so that you can create a diverse environment and
If the event organizer or the markets organizer is not doing that, that's a red flag.
Vivian (09:18) I think a good way to also kind of gauge this is be responsible, go out there and look for information on the event. I love visual cues. Anything where I can go on Facebook maybe and check out the event page, right? And so that way I can see pictures of like previous stuff that they've done, mostly because in there.
If it's an event that's already established, you're gonna be able to get information on like fill out this application, right? They're gonna tell you upfront what is needed in order for a business to be able to apply. And like Chelsea said, if the only requirement is you got to be able to pay the $10 fee to participate, you may want to stop and look at the pictures and be like,
Okay, what type of businesses actually go out there? Yes. And what type of audience does it pull in? What type of people come to this event? And is that the kind of people that are interested in my business or would be interested in my business? Because those all of those cues can kind of give you like a heads up of like this may not be a good event for me if they're allowing everybody and their mama in
Chelsea (10:40) Absolutely.
Vivian (10:41) right with a ten dollar fee.
No and they don't have an application. Yeah.
Chelsea (10:46) Yeah, Vivian, and that's going to be a main theme throughout this entire conversation. Just do your research. Before you decide to be in a vendor market or in any event, make sure you're looking up what's going on at the ep at that event.
Vivian (11:02) and also I would say for me personally, something that would kind of rub me the wrong way is if I was interested and I sent in my name or I contacted them and then they were like, by the way, it's a two hundred dollar fee to participate, but it but that wasn't anywhere, you know, in the verbiage. It wasn't anywhere on the website, it wasn't in any of the documentation. So I do think
being weary of shadiness like that up front is probably, you know, we want you to just I don't know, have a heads up on that kind of stuff.
Chelsea (11:38) Absolutely.
That is further down in my notes, but let's talk about it now. Information in general. Okay. Can you find information about this event or vendor market? Do they have a website? Do they have a social media presence? Is there any past history about this event? Can you find any of it? Yeah. I think it's real shady if this is their third year hosting, but you can't find any information on past events.
Vivian (12:04) because the other part of participating in something like this is they need to be equally doing as much marketing for the actual event to get the most amount of people out there so that you can have a successful day of selling. And if they're not doing their part in promoting in the community, then you know, what is even going on? Like what what are the odds that you're gonna
see a lot of people or enough people that day that you can actually convert to sales.
Chelsea (12:38) Yeah, and this is a big problem. There's a lot of vendor markets out there that maybe share it once and then that's it. On like on their Facebook, like they post about it one time, and then they expect the vendors to do all of the marketing. You're already having to set up and prepare and get all your product ready on top. Now you should be. You should be doing the marketing as well. Yeah. But
You can't handle all of it and the event organizer should not expect the vendors to do all of the marketing.
no marketing is a red flag as well.
Vivian (13:18) Yes. You know, I know this isn't possible every single time. However, what I would say is it would be nice if you went to the event first as a event
Chelsea (13:32) What do you
Vivian (13:32) goer event goer to check it out and see what types of businesses are there, what the crowd is, you know, if a lot of people, if it's something that's extremely popular,
And then that way you know for certain, like, hey, this is a really good event that I want to be a part of the next time they do it. However, I do know that's limiting because some of these events only come up once a year. And so if that's the case, it does mean that you would have to wait till the next year to participate. But you know, substituting that research, if you do your research really well, and I would say don't be shy about maybe contacting
Another business that you know was there last year.
Chelsea (14:15) I love this.
Vivian (14:17) Yeah. If you can tell from the photos that you find online that there was a particular business that was out there and you're like, I'm kind of on the fence. It seems like it's a good event. It seems like it was extremely popular last year, but I just don't know about, you know, if it was organized well enough. Reach out to that business owner and say,
Hey, by the way, I'm considering participating in this upcoming event. I noticed you did it last year. What are your thoughts? Was it well organized and worth your time? Business owners, we stick together. Okay. We love giving each other the juicy details on stuff. And so if it wasn't something that they thought was well organized, they'll be very upfront about it. Or they'll say, yeah, it was great. The only
problem I had that day was parking. Yeah. Right. Or something like that. So you could get information from other business owners, participants.
Chelsea (15:09) This comes back to my hot take. Don't be afraid to ask questions. There are no stupid questions. Your recommendation of actually going to the event, if you can't do that, ask all these questions to the event organizers. If they don't have answers, then it's a little bit of a red flag. You know, they should know what their target audience they should at least know how many people have shown up in the past or how many businesses like yours have participated in this market.
Vivian (15:38) This episode of the SOB Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the SOB community. If you're a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing and you feel like you've wasted money and time on marketing help that didn't deliver, or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skool.com/SOB to sign up today and to get instant access and weekly support, that's skool.com/sob.
Vivian (16:14) The other thing we want you to look out for are venue logistics. Okay. This goes hand in hand with the information. If they don't tell you where you need to be parking,
what time you need to arrive as a vendor, not what time the event starts, but what time they want all the vendors in place and ready for setup, which is usually like thirty minutes to an hour ahead of time of when the event starts. All of this information should be readily available. You know, yeah, if they
Chelsea (16:45) Take your money and then don't give you any information until like the day before, that's a huge red flag.
Vivian (16:53) Absolutely. I'm trying to think what else venue wise Chelsea would you know, the the one thing is a lot of places, I don't know if you guys live in the south where the weather can get a little hairy sometimes, but here in South Carolina, it's funny because literally it will be so sunny and ninety-eight degrees, and then by thirty minutes later it'll be thundering. Downpour downpour. Most
events should have a rain, what do you call it? Like plan policy. Yes. And so and it's very simple. All they have to say is like, you know, if it's an outdoor event, you just want to know that, hey, if it happens to rain that day, are you gonna delay the event or are you gonna reschedule or are you just not gonna do any of that? Are you just gonna give us our money back? Yeah. And I
Chelsea (17:46) oh, i thought you were gonna say are you just gonna make a stand in the rain?
Vivian (17:49) Or or
Chelsea (17:51) I mean if you if it's a bad event organizer maybe.
Vivian (17:55) Most people that are used to living in areas where this could happen during a season, you know, obviously this doesn't happen as much in the winter, but during the summertime it might they usually accommodate for that or they think ahead on it. So don't be, you know, afraid to ask and say like, Hey, do you have a rain policy or do you have a rain plan in case weather gets a little extreme?
Chelsea (18:18) I'm glad you brought that up, Vivian. Let's talk about communication. If you can't get any answers from the event organizer, huge red flag. Yes. You should be able to know or if you are a part of an event, you should know who the event organizer is and you should have their contact information. If you don't have that, that's a big problem. If they're not responding
Vivian (18:40) Yeah, let me
Chelsea (18:42) to you, that's a problem.
Vivian (18:43) Let me give you an example of something that happened recently because I think I mentioned in another episode I was out on vacation and in my big girl job, it happened to be the same weekend that we do this really huge event locally that's for back to school. And we love the event. It draws a lot of people out there because they are giving out free like backpacks and school supplies. So it's a great event to be a part of. I had noticed because we've done this event for so many years, that they hadn't emailed me and I was like,
So I reached out and the lady, it was an oversight on her part, not on purpose. And she's like, we we happen to have, you know, a tent available. I said, Great. I guess she assumed I had all the information. I've worked with her before. I had no shame in typing up a bulleted list of information she had not given me, where I literally was just like, Hey, quick questions, you know, that I need answers to.
bullet it out, she sends it back. And so then the team that was gonna set up since I wasn't gonna be here had all the detailed information, parking passes, what time they were going to be there to set up, who the event organizer was, what her cell phone number was, because in the morning you guys or before the event, if anything pops up, you want to be able to quickly send a text.
And you know, whether that's like, hey, I'm so sorry I'm running late or something's going on, you just it's good to have that contact information. but it's nice because you feel more prepared when you have all of those moving parts. Like you just it's part of the preparation that you do for that day. Absolutely.
Chelsea (20:25) Vivian, this is a huge red flag.
Vivian (20:29) What? Okay.
Chelsea (20:30) If they're pressuring you. And I don't mean they're letting you know, like, hey, the application deadline's coming up or stuff, or you know, we only have a few slots left, anything like that. If they are like there's a difference between giving you a heads up that there's limited space and trying to pressure you to give them the deposit now for your booth.
You know? Mm-hmm. Like there's a huge difference. If they're insisting also, if they're insisting that you pay right now with Venmo or Cash App, that feels shady to me. all the lights are going off, bells are ringing, 'cause that that's shady.
Vivian (21:15) Yeah, I it's weird because I do know can we also talk about there are events that are first-time events.
Chelsea (21:26) Yes, and that's fair. Let me rephrase this.
Vivian (21:29) Mm-hmm. Y'all are adults.
Chelsea (21:31) You're smart. You are. I mean, maybe you're not. Maybe you're a teenager starting out your small business. I love that for you. So maybe you don't have this skill quite yet, but y'all can tell when you're being pressured. Yeah. You can feel it. So I'm I'm just saying trust your gut.
If you feel like they're pressuring you, if you feel like it's a little sketchy, then maybe you don't want to do it.
Vivian (21:58) especially if it's for a ten dollar deposit, that's one thing. If it's an event that you're doing that's like a five hundred dollar deposit for a booth, you know, then use y we always want you to go with your gut, right? There's a reason you have a gut instinct that tells you like, hey, this doesn't feel quite right.
Chelsea (22:18) Yeah. Unless you're an alien like Vivian.
Vivian (22:20) Yeah, and then I just don't have that. No, she's
Chelsea (22:22) No, she's just doing everything.
Vivian (22:26) but I do understand what you're saying. And pressure is never good. The other part about pressure too is it does make you wonder if you feel like someone is being excessively committed to to getting you to say yes to participate, do the research and ask yourself what could possibly be behind this? Is it is it because they are trying to make
money and they've never done this event and they don't have enough people that are interested in it. Or is it simply because it's super close to the deadline? I'm gonna be honest with you, I have that personality where if you push me too much, I shut down. Like I'm just like, I ain't doing anything that you want me to do. And so I would probably just be like, you know, hey, I'll catch you I'll catch you next year. Yeah. I'll catch you next year. Let me come as a event goer this year so I can see
What's going on and then go from there.
Chelsea (23:22) Okay, Vivian, I that's all the red flags. Okay. I'm sure there's more out there. If you guys have more red flags that you've witnessed or experienced, please put it in the comments.
Vivian (23:32) Please tell us what if if you've had something happen to you. and friendly reminder, we take voice notes. We would love to play your like voice note over on the podcast. So if you've had an experience, go to our website and leave us a voice note and tell us what the experience was with the vendor market.
Chelsea (23:53) We
would love to hear it. I do have a beige flag. okay. Do you know what a beige flag is? It's however you feel about it. Okay. You you it's it's like
Vivian (24:07) I think you need to explain it better for aliens. We don't know where but yeah.
Chelsea (24:11) It's
one of those that like it's not a deal breaker. Okay. But you're not you haven't decided how you feel about it yet. So you need more information. Okay. Okay. Beige flag. If it's a first time event, I'm not saying first time events are bad and that you shouldn't do them. I'm saying you need to take into account that you're taking a gamble when you participate in a first time.
Event because there's no previous track record and they've never done it before. So you don't know how it's gonna go. You can make educated decisions based off what you're seeing, like if they're promoting the crap out of it and they're being very organized and they're giving you all the information and stuff like that, and you feel good about it, do it. If it feels very disorganized, you're not feeling good about it, there's no marketing on it at all.
Maybe you don't want to do it.
Vivian (25:08) This would be a great time and totally acceptable for you to include a question that says, What is your plan to market the event? That's a good question all around for every event. However, for some vendor markets that have been that are well established, you could probably find this information out, right? Or you just kind of know because you've seen it firsthand. But for a first-time event, you certainly are, you know, 100%
able to ask them, you know, and not feel weird about just say, like, hey, since this is the first time that you're holding this vendor market, what are your plans to drive people to the market? Like what are you going to be doing to get the word out there about it? And hopefully they'll send you a list of a couple things that they have lined up, right? Whether it's an appearance on, you know, Low Country Live, one of the local stations, or
you know, writing into the newspaper to get coverage to let them let the community know that it's an upcoming event in their area. Whatever that is, hopefully they have planned that out. So and I I do like this being labeled as a beige flag because some of you out there are, you know, you you're taking on a risk. You don't mind taking on that risk. Especially if maybe it's only fifty bucks to participate, then it's worth it. The only thing is
Maybe it's you're giving up a full Saturday, right? Mm-hmm. And you'd be spending money on product to take product out there. So if if you're okay with that risk, then go ahead and do it. But you know, other than that, it's
Chelsea (26:49) Beige flat. Okay.
I think this was a great conversation, Vivian. And I just want to let you guys know if you are very interested in doing vendor markets, we have so many episodes. I mean so many episodes on this topic. I think on YouTube there's even a playlist that's specifically for vendor market content. So go check that out.
Vivian (27:11) That's right. And we hope at this point, we hope that fall twenty twenty six is gonna be successful for you. It is a great time to get out there to promote your business through these community events, through these community markets. You can make quite a bit of money in it. I can tell you that here in the Charleston area, I know very specifically one artist who she does Charleston.
artwork and she grew her entire business off of participating in these events. And now she doesn't have to do it as often because she has a lot of online sales because so many people have seen her at these events. Also, gift giving season is right around the corner. So
Chelsea (27:59) I've already started my Christmas shopping. That's I'm not ashamed to say that.
Vivian (28:03) And a lot of people like Chelsea here actually and I I do it too, I prefer to buy from a small local business than to buy off of Amazon like gifts. Absolutely. And so
Chelsea (28:15) I thought really quick. I thought you were gonna say Chelsea and a lot of people and myself like to start early and I was about to say absolutely not. Do not let her lie to you. She's a last minute gift buyer.
Vivian (28:28) I am, which is why I love going to the Christmas markets because most of them are like a week before Christmas. So I can do it. But just a reminder that this is a great season to take full advantage of doing this, these sales at local events.
Chelsea (28:47) That's great. Okay, so go be smart about the vendor markets and local events that you decide to participate in and go be the best SOB you can be.