I participated in a local market this last weekend, and was it crazy! I thought I would do a market post-mortem so anyone who is interested in doing a market themselves can see exactly what other artists are doing and get some key takeaways before running one themselves. Let's get into it!
Context
Date: 8/26/2026 from 9am to 3pm
Goal: Show up and make a single sale.
Selling: Soap, Magnets and Trays
Context: When I signed up for this market, they were unfortunately full on crochet vendors. As we are mostly crochet-focused (with some other things of course), I needed to essentially create all new inventory in the weeks coming up to the market. I was selling soap, which I fortunately had already made, magnets and what I called trinket trays. I also decided to add in some remaining resin items from when I was using resin from several years ago. It's not my finest work, but I wanted to see if I could get rid of some of it.
Inventory Prep
Soap
I have 3 scents of soap, and thankfully I already had this all prepped previous to the market from a market last year that fell through. They were all packed up, and ready to go, and I only had to buy a display stand for them.
I did end up redoing one of the scents, the coffee one, mostly because the coffee grains floated to the surface. So I opened up all the packages carefully so I could reuse the same packing (less waste!), melted it all down, repoured it and made sure to move the soap around as it was cooling so the grains were throughout the entire soap bar rather than all on the surface, cut it all up and repackaged it. It was definitely worth it, they turned out much better than before!
Magnets
I had previously made some magnets for myself, and I found that I really enjoyed the process of it. The process included sculpting, baking, painting (I used white clay instead of pre-coloured clay), glazing, and gluing the magnet on. This was a massive process and the vast majority of the work, but I used what I had and made due.
Trinket Trays
The trinket trays were also a bit of a process for some of them, and others not quite as much. The trays were made out of Let's Resin Magic Pour, which is similar to a concrete. You mix it with water, colouring if you want, pour it into a mold and let it set for about 30m before taking it out and letting it cure for several hours to fully harden.
A lot of experimentation happened with these, because I created them with the intention to create designs on them, but to put it simply, there was a lot of trial and error between the materials used for the design and glazing. Materials either bled, smeared or I wasn't able to draw/paint/etc. on them. It was an incredibly frustrating process, but I semi figured it out in the end and made some trinket trays.
Other
I'm including an other category here, because I had things that didn't quite fit into the other ones. These were all items made previously, which mostly includes the resin items mentioned above. I had not only trays, but also jars (which I included with the trays since I had signage for it), straw toppers, little mini cute trays, paper weights and other very small or few items that aren't really worth mentioning. These items were not my main part of the market, but I did sell some of them surprisingly.
What sold?
Soap:
- Peppermint and Rose x1
- Cedar and Thyme x3
- Coffee x3
- Christmas Set x3
- Bee Set x1
Magnets:
- Pick your own 3 x5
- Single Magnet x2
- Halloween Set x2
Trays:
- Rainbow Jar
- Strawberry Jar
Other:
- Mermaid Tail x1
- Misc. Resin Item x3
My Thoughts: Overall, I probably didn't sell as much as I could have. My goal was to show up and make a single sale, and I made my first sale pretty quickly (it was early on but I forgot to write it down, so when I did write it down it was 9:52am, but that's inaccurate), which was super exciting!
The soap sold differently than I thought it would. I thought the peppermint would be the hot seller, but rather it was the other two that were more popular. My total inventory was 13 bars of each (12 wrapped, 1 out for people to smell), and I sold a total of 7 bars (almost 18% of my inventory). I'm happily surprised that the Christmas sets sold as much as they did.
I made over 100 clay magnets, so to sell a total of 23 was a bit disheartening as that was only around 20% of my total magnet inventory for the amount of work I put in. A few key ones sold out and were more popular, like the Halloween set and an orange and black cat that I made, and the food/sweets were definitely way less popular.
The trays were a borderline complete fail. I didn't sell a single tray, but instead sold two jars, one made of the Let's Resin Magic Pour, and the other made out of regular resin. Again, disheartening to see nothing really sell here.
While it felt like I didn't sell much, I'm still happy with how the event turned out and how much I made. Let's look at the financial breakdown.
Financial Breakdown
Market cost: -$45
CashApp: $46
Cash: $74
Card (Square): $160
Square Processing Fees: -$5.23
Total Earned: $229.77
What Worked vs. What Failed
Key Wins:
Having all the magnets out available to see
Cute vs. general designs, cute will win (magnets)
Business cards out and available to pick up were excellent
Logo stickers were asked about on the table
Got my first (despite only) email signup
Learned what sold well vs. what didn't
Learned most people were looking for gifts for others for Christmas, despite it not even being October yet
Critical Failures:
No signage for "let me know what magnet you want and I'll get it for you" -> People picked up their own magnets off the board so I had to replace them throughout the market despite pre-packaging all the extra magnets I had
Having a side table and a table towards the back didn't lead people in as I was expecting. Only left space for two people or so, otherwise it was too crowded.
Not clear that the soap that was out was able to be picked up and smelled - People kept picking up the packaged soap instead
Trays were not popular at all. "Cute" but not buyable
Mini soap sets (Christmas & Bee) not clear that they were the same scents as the full bars
Actionable Takeaways
Reduce pricing
Trays
Magnets
Add a children's basket they can touch
Get a foldable cart
Create a large QR code for website people can scan at the table
Add more signage for soaps
Scents for mini sets
'Smell me' for soap bars that are out
Move soap bars that are out to align with where you pick them up instead of on the table
Move table to front of designated area
Final Thoughts
Overall, while I didn't do as well as maybe I could have, I learned SO much from this market and wouldn't mind doing more in the future. I made a profit, hit my (very simple) goals and had a good experience overall.
Despite not selling much, all the items I made don't go bad. Inventory can be kept and sold in the future, so it's not like the time I spent making those items were completely wasted. Plus I was selling items that I don't even normally sell. I made essentially a whole new inventory from scratch, and still made a profit. I'd consider that a win.
I hope this helps anyone who might be interested in being a vendor for a market in the future, but remember that everything is a learning experience and not everything will go to plan, but plan the best you can and get some takeaways from it for next time!