Fash'n'Treasure

via

This weekend I had a stall at Fash'n'Treasure with two friends. Fash'n'Treasure is a regular fashion market that happens every month or so at Exhibition Park in Canberra (also fondly known as EPIC). It used to be held at the Old Bus Depot Markets in Kingston, but was moved up to EPIC in the last year because it just got too popular.

We travelled convoy-style with our cars full of second-hand goodies waiting to go to new homes. We made cute tags (of course I didn't take any photos of them) and I also used some fruit-themed notes that were bombonieres from a friend's wedding a couple of years ago (you know who you are, and they are so handy!) as tags.

A couple of quick tips and notes about having a market stall:

1) Be organised: This means that you should not stay up til 1 am the night before because you put off pricing items for too long, leaving no time to see if your rack fits into the car without needing to be dismantled (spoiler: it doesn't) making you late to the convoy at 8:30 the next morning.

2) Price a little higher than you want to sell, and give people a "discount" on the spot. A couple of people were undecided about a few items and the ones I gave a slight discount to snapped it up straight away while the others that I did not offer a discount walked away. I ended up regretting not offering a slight discount to the others because those items ended up not selling.

My pricing system was this: the price of the item indicated how much I wanted to sell it. That meant that some pieces that other people would sell for much more money were super cheap (ie I really wanted to get rid of them) and some items I had priced a little higher people might think were overpriced (things that I might have wanted to take home with me but knew that I shouldn't).

3) What sells will surprise you. There were a few items on our stall that were consistently picked up but never sold. For me, this was a blue polka dot dress of mine. Almost everyone who came in to the stall picked up the dress and showed it to their friends but no one tried it on. I also had a bright yellow vintage Cue skirt that I adore but that does not fit me. I was really surprised that no one wanted that since when I found it in an op shop I snapped it up straight away! Just shows that people have different tastes.

4) Have fun! While I did make a fairly good profit, it still didn't pay as much per hour as my day job does. It didn't matter to me though as money making wasn't necessarily my main objective. It was just fun sharing my passion for good clothes with other people and giving my pre-loved clothes away to new homes where they will be loved anew.

I had so much fun on the day, fulfilling a little dream of mine to have a vintage shop. After trying it out, I don't know if I could hack it day to day (seriously, how do you price things??? Also, I am the worst haggler ever, on both sides of the equation.) I wouldn't rule out having another stall in the future though - it was fun playing shopkeeper.

Look out for a post on my finds at Fash'n'Treasure later this week (I restrained myself and only bought a couple of items).