So far, I’ve done two small physical markets for Harvestcare: one indoor and another outdoors. Plus, I’ve done the virtual Handmade Markets for all four of their pre-Christmas events. Already, I have a few Lessons Learned about Markets from these experiences even though the big physical ones are still closed due to the pandemic.

Lessons Learned:

• Know your market demographics – Suburban markets haven’t been that great for me though I’ve certainly done better with my products than other stalls. Everyone says that my products will sell with a younger, more environmentally conscious consumer at the physical Handmade Markets. So, hopefully they’ll be back on next year.
• People buy what they can test – my biggest seller at the Markets has been the orange hand balm as I have it out with sampling sticks. It smells amazing, and so it’s hard for people to ignore it once they try it. My bottled products on the other hand have barely sold, and I have way too much stock right now as a result.
• November is still too early for Christmas Markets – I didn’t sell but a few gift packs in all these markets. Instead, the attendees are still buying products for themselves.
• Make sure to have products at different price points – I had products from $8 to $50 for sale at these markets. The biggest sellers were around the $20 mark.
• Use the Markets for market research – I had plenty of feedback during the markets including that I should charge more for my products because they look amazing, and I needed a normal lotion. Yes, still working on that one!
• Consider the Markets as a branding exercise for a new business – I knew that I might not recover the cost of the registration fees when I signed up. I had to take that risk though and considered it as a branding exercise. For the more people that see my logo, the more likely they’ll take a chance on it when they see it at a stockists’ store.

What to do with leftover stock now?

Since I have so much leftover stock from the Markets – especially in bottled forms, I need to ramp up my sales activities to stockists or online to see if I can move them. The challenge though is that I have a different pump on the bottles than what was sold to retailers previously because of the 3-month stock shortage. Furthermore, I usually mail bottles with the pump separately because of leakage. So, I’d have to throw away a lot of used pumps if I change the selling model now. I’m not sure that I have much of a choice though.

Oh well. I’ll chock it up to lessons learned about Markets. At least I had the chance to practice before the big ones reopen – hopefully next year.