I did our first Harvestcare market this weekend with some help from friends. It was a tiny one with only 30 people allowed to go through at a time because of COVID.

Still, I said yes because I wanted the learning experience, and this was the first indoor market available since we started the brand back in April.

Overall it went pretty well, though I’m exhausted from also bottling and making products into the late hours each night. We only sold about 10% of it, but now I have inventory for the virtual Handmade Markets too which starts next weekend.

Lessons learned from our first Harvestcare market?

• Know your demographics – everyone told me that we would do really well with a younger, more environmentally conscious buyer like at the Handmade Markets. This one was more of an older, suburban crowd.
• Raise your prices for markets – Other stallholders said that our products looked so good that we really needed to charge more of a premium price especially if we were paying a stallholder fee at a market and the customer doesn’t have to pay for shipping as a result.
• Samples work when they smell amazing – I was offering samples with a testing stick. Probably half the people that tried our Orange Hand Balm bought it, but we didn’t sell very many products in bottles because you can’t exactly trial the soap. This gives me the incentive to finish our product development of the normal body lotion.
• Presentation matters – We had a lot of positive feedback on our presentation too, but I also know that we need to invest in something more if we do a physical Handmade Markets in the future.

Overall, we sold only about $800 in products which was way more than the stalls on either side of me. Still, it’s not enough to justify my time right now especially when I know the demographics are wrong. So, I’ve decline the offer to participate in another Christmas Market at the same location in December because I’m not convinced that we would do much better.

More to learn, but I’m glad that we finally have experience with our first Harvestcare market.