Tag: market

Last late night and market day

Last night was the last of five late nights of Zoom meetings for photography standards. The session again began at 23:00 and ended a few minutes late, after 02:30. The wrap-up session is administrative stuff, going over results from the technical discussions, action items, and setting up the next meeting, which will be in October. One important issue was deciding on a response to the Chinese notice of intention to start working on photography related standards within the International Telecommunications Union. I won’t go into details here, but we’re putting on the diplomatic cotton gloves because this is potentially a large issue.

I slept in to 08:00 this morning, but then had to get up to prepare for the day at Turramurra Market. I’d driven most of my stock out yesterday evening and set it up in the venue (which is locked up overnight). So this morning I basically only had to show up on time, and set up a small amount of additional stock that I brought on the second trip. My wife and Scully came along, so she could sell her doggie bandanas as well.

The market was… small. Very small. Smaller than I expected. There were just nine stalls, including mine. Lindfield has about 50 stalls, and Kirribilli which I did twice has close to 200, and of course correspondingly higher traffic. People did come through regularly, but there were never any significant numbers – maybe a maximum of 8 or 9 people browsing at any one time, and dropping down to virtually zero at times. I sold a few greeting cards, but not enough to make a profit on the stall rental. And we are booked to do it again tomorrow. Hopefully more people will come through on the Sunday.

Our stall was next to a woman selling biscuits. She had a small baking company, making shortbread style sweet and savoury biscuits. Food stalls always do well. People walk past my photography stall and have a glance and, no, they don’t have any use for greeting cards or a wall hanging. But everyone eats. So she was selling biscuits hand over fist. In between we chatted and she was telling me stories about her life and travels around the world. It was good, because it helped to pass the time in which there were no customers!

When the market closed up for the day we came home, and then went out for dinner at a local Greek restaurant. After a long week, I really felt like relaxing and having a nice dinner that I didn’t have to cook. Just the market tomorrow to go, and then I can really relax next week.

New content today:

Relax Sunday

I had a bit of a sleep in this morning – I think I must have needed a bit of a catch up. I didn’t feel particularly active so didn’t do very much today, except for a long walk with my wife and Scully.

The quarterly Coal Loader Artisans Markets were on, and it’s a bit of a hike but within walking distance from us.

Coal Loader Market

As we arrived, there was an oil tanker being guided into port by tugboats, which was kind of interesting.

Coal Loader Market

As you can see it was a grey day, and it sprinkled lightly for a bit, but not so much that we really got wet. It was also very cold. My wife had gone out earlier with Scully and told me it was warm and sunny and I wouldn’t need a jumper. So I went to the market with just a jacket over my shirt, but the clouds rolled in and a cold wind as well, and I felt chilly the whole time.

This afternoon I relaxed and spent some time compiling historical dates for a project of a friend of mine: Bisecting History. For example, this one from earlier this month:

New content today:

Marginal Market profits

I spent most of today at East Lindfield Market, trying to sell my photography stuff. I feel a bit like a broken record saying again that it was really slow, with fewer customers than normal. Honestly, it feels like every market except the first few that I did has been “slower than normal”, ever since COVID hit. As one of the market organisers said today, this is the first time they’ve managed to have two markets in a row (consecutive months) in the last 18 months, with the various COVID and weather cancellations that we’ve had. We may need a run of consecutive markets to get the customer numbers back up again.

Furthermore, today was the first really cold weekend we’ve had as we move from summer into winter. So a lot of people might have just decided to stay home, not yet used to the cold weather. Hopefully next month (assuming it’s not cancelled…) people will be more used to the winter chill and come out to the market again.

Anyway, at least we did better than last month. My wife sold some of her dog bandanas, and I sold a bunch of greeting cards. Together we managed to just scrape over the line of making a profit over the stall hire cost. Which is significantly better than we did last month, so that’s good at least. It’s a tough time running a market stall at the moment.

New content today:

A day of prep work

Today I spent doing a lot of preparation, for two different things.

Tomorrow is market day, and I had a few things to do to get ready for travelling over there and setting up my stall. My wife and I will be trying to sell my photography and her doggie bandanas again. We have a new display rack for the bandanas, to get them up closer to people’s eye-lines, rather than just lying flat on the table. So hopefully we’ll sell more of those.

Mostly I worked on writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips though. The current buffer will run out this week, so I need to get a batch photographed and assembled in the first few days after Sunday. It’s actually going to be tricky squeezing it in, as I have other things to do this week too.

This afternoon we took a break (me from writing comics, my wife from sewing bandanas) to take Scully for a long walk. We went past the bakery a suburb over and down past the water – our usual long route. Although the weather was clear, it was very cold and windy. The first tendrils of winter have really hit in the past couple of days. Today’s maximum was only 16.9°C, which is pretty much a chilly winter day. I rugged up with a jumper (a sweater in US English) and a jacket, and still felt cold.

I know this is almost laughable for those of you who live in colder climates, but this is pretty much midwinter temperatures here, and I’m not used to it. It already feels like this is going to be a colder and longer winter than last year’s remarkably mild one.

New content today:

Market Sunday

We got up at 6:00 this morning to pack the car and head to the market at East Lindfield. Previously I’d been hiring a car for this venue, so I could fit all my gear and stock into it. But this time I tried making two trips in my own car, which is enough to carry all the stuff. The venue is about 15 minutes drive away in early Sunday morning light traffic, so it took half an hour to make the trip home and back to the market again, during which my wife minded the half of the stock that we’d taken on the first trip. Overall it worked pretty well, and saved me hiring a bigger car for the day.

That Great Market stall

I was hopeful that there’d be plenty of customers and I’d make decent sales. Unfortunately the people were only middling in number. Several came through and stopped to look at my photos and have a chat, but not many bought anything. Overall though, I enjoyed this market a lot better than last week’s and Kirribilli. The vibe is a lot more relaxed, and a much higher fraction of the people stop to have a look at things. At Kirribilli, there’s a lot of foot traffic with people just walking through the market to get from somewhere to somewhere else, and the majority of them don’t stop to even look at anything, which is a bit disheartening. But at Lindfield, it’s a smaller market in a slightly out-of-the-way area, so people coming here are coming for the market. So they walk slower, linger longer, and stop to chat to the stallholders.

So it was a lot nicer than last week. But… again I didn’t make enough sales to cover the cost of the stall rental. I’m going to give it another try next month, but if this gig doesn’t start turning a profit I’m going to have to have a think about it.

New content today:

Market prep again

Tomorrow I have another market day, this time back at Lindfield, which is the smaller suburban market – but oddly the one where I’ve made better sales than than the bigger Kirribilli Market. So I’m hoping for a good day.

I spent much of today writing and making Darths & Droids comics. After lunchtime I’d had enough, and resorted to housecleaning to break the screen time.

Not much else to report.

New content today:

Cold market day

Today was the Kirribilli Arts & Crafts Market, and I had my stall there selling my photography prints and greeting cards. My wife had a small part of the stall for her dog bandanas. I went in with optimistic thoughts about the number of customers.

The weather was fine and sunny, but windy. And it was cold – winter cold. The maximum temperature in Sydney was only 19.7°C. I had a jacket on, but after standing at the stall in the morning for a while and not walking around, I was shivering from the cold. My wife had to go buy me a hot chocolate to try to warm up.

There were a lot more customers going through the market than any of the previous days I’ve been at this one. However, the demographic in this area is younger than at Lindfield, the other market that I go to. And it seems that the strongest buyers of my products are older women buying greeting cards, and middle-aged parents with children around the pre-teen years, who buy matted prints for the kids. There were a few of this demographic today, but mostly it was young couples, singles, and groups of teenagers – very very few of whom are particularly interested in greeting cards or fine art photography prints.

The upshot is I didn’t make enough sales to cover the cost of the stall rental, even with a busy market. I’m going to have to rethink whether Kirribilli is a good market for me to be attending. I’m a lot more optimistic about Lindfield Market next week, which is a suburban area with a lot of empty nesters and families with older children.

It was a long and tiring day still. We got up at 05:30, to head to the market by 06:00, and we only got home with all of our stuff after 4:30 pm (the market having closed at 3 pm).

Then it was a simple dinner and relaxing before an early night, because my wife has to get up before 6 again tomorrow for a week of work in the office.

New content today:

Comic writing and market prep

Tomorrow (Sunday) is Kirribilli Markets, where I’m attempting once more to sell prints of my photography. The last few markets have been pretty dismal, for various reasons, but the forecast for tomorrow is good and I’m hoping to actually make a profit above the market stall rental fee. We shall see.

So I had some prep work to get ready for that today, going over my checklist and making sure everything is in order, before the 5:30 start tomorrow morning, to load the car and get down to the market soon after 6am and start setting up.

The other thing I tried to do today was write the next batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I got a decent few written, but I’ll have to knuckle down on Monday (after the market Sunday) to finish the batch off ready to photograph, hopefully on Tuesday at the latest.

New content today:

Wet and wild market day

The alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, so my wife and I could head to the market by 6:00 to start setting up. It was still like night when we left… and it wasn’t helped by the heavy rain.

To take all of our stuff to the market, we need to make two trips in our car. I left the first load there with her and Scully to mine while I drove home for the second load. This load includes two large easels which I use to display large photo prints. The trouble is they don’t fit in the car with the roof up (it’s a convertible). The rain had eased off to almost nothing, so I risked it and put the easels in with the roof open. It was actually fine driving back to the market, although the rain started falling again lightly. But when I got there I expected to be able to drive into the tunnel to start unloading under shelter… but there was a queue of other stallholders waiting to drive into the parking area, and the parking marshal was being very slow in letting people in. As I sat there, not moving, the rain got heavier… and heavier…

Eventually I got in, and unloaded the gear. I had to use a towel to dry stuff, including the interior of the car. My wife parked the car and returned while I set up the stall. I made some space on one side for her dog bandanas. We were excited and hopeful.

But the weather was dreadful. It rained heavily and with strong winds. Although we were inside the road tunnel, we were given a stall right near one end, and spray from the rain came in and got all over our stuff. And there was a drain grate right in front of the stall, and it was overflowing from all the water, meaning that anyone who wanted to browse our stall basically had to stand in a puddle.

Some stallholders had obviously elected not to come today, as there were a few vacant stalls. I asked the market admin if I could move our stall, and they said yes, so we moved to a more central location, further from the rain spray. But that didn’t help with the number of customers, which was painfully low. Mostly we chatted with other stall-holders, lamenting how nobody was out browsing the market today.

Then at one point a really strong gust of wind blew through the tunnel, and scattered stuff all over the place. Other stalls had to deal with racks of clothes falling over, or artwork falling off tables. One of my greeting card display stands fell over, and all the cards fell out…. into the gutter where there was a stream of rainwater.

It was a horrible day. There were eventually a few customers – maybe 5 or 6 people stopped to browse through my photos. I made exactly one sale… of 3 greeting cards. It wasn’t even enough to cover the cost of my lunch.

The market officially ends at 3:00pm, but most stallholders were packing up by 2:00, with a shrug and a sigh and a “maybe next month”.

We got home and crashed, just watching comedy TV until bed time.

Tomorrow we head off on our 5-day holiday road trip up the coast. I think we need it.

New content today:

Vision and market prep

Today was hectic. I had another class to teach my Human Vision course on Outschool. Then it was time to prepare for tomorrow’s market at Kirribilli.

I’m helping my wife to start selling some of her dog bandanas as well, and we had a checklist of stuff to run through: doing a sign with prices, setting her up to process payments using Square, taking some photos of Scully with sample bandanas so she can post on Instagram – she’s calling her brand Scully xo. Check it out!

Labels for dog bandanas

Scully xo bandana modelling

Scully xo bandana modelling

And I really needed to wash the car. The park where I take Scully every week has nearby parking, but it’s all under fig trees, and the rainbow lorikeets hang out and chew on figs and drop sticky bits of half chewed figs all over the place. So it gets peppered with this sticky residue and needs to be cleaned regularly, but I haven’t done it for a long time.

And… gosh… that actually ate up the whole day. Tonight it’s an early night, so we can get up at 5:30 to haul stuff to the market and set up…

New content today: