Sunday 26 January 2014

MOVING FORWARD

Hello everyone

I hope you have had a good week.  We have had some very odd weather here recently; apart from the now normal heavy rain, we had what appeared to be a mini-tornado yesterday!   Winds that bent trees over, heavy rain followed by calm.  Very odd.  Looks like the weather this week is going to be similar, but with some snow to break things up!

I have spent a lot of time this week contacting previous and new stallholders with details of this year's events in Godalming Borough Hall  and I am pleased to say that I already have bookings for all six of the events.  It was a little nerve-racking really because this is the second change of ownership of this business in a year and understandably people do wonder what the future will bring.  Thank you to those of you that have already booked, I will be in touch with each of you in the next week to confirm details.

Marketing and promotion of the events has begun: I have been promoting the events on Twitter and Facebook this week to attract both new stallholders and customers.  All Godalming events have been listed on Stallfinder and also on UK Craft Fairs; both websites are visited by customers looking for fairs to visit and by stallholders looking for events to take part in.

I am in the process of contacting local shops and businesses in Godalming to see if they will support the markets by way of advertising.  This could be by allowing me to place a poster in their shop window, having leaflets on their sales counters or other ways of advertising that will be mutually beneficial to the markets and the businesses.

One final new action this week is that along with a new owner, I have changed the name of the event company: as you know originally it was called Godalming Independent Market, then Independent Market and I am changing it to Surrey Independent Markets.  I know Anna wanted to add other venues to the list of markets and as I want to continue with this, I felt Surrey needed to be included in the name as the markets will be held in this county (although if great venues over the borders seem ideal, I will certainly check them out).  I am in the process of setting up a new website for Surrey Independent Markets and will post details on here once that is complete.

That's all for this week.  Don't forget to contact me if you would like to be a guest blogger on here - it is free and another way to promote your company, new product or range and freebies are always welcome.

Have a good week.

Jill

Sunday 19 January 2014

UP AND RUNNING

Hello everyone

This is my first blog post on the new Independent Markets blog and I am really looking forward to a very exciting year arranging craft and gift events.  A big thank you to Anna Matthews for all the great work she did in 2013 and for handing over such a well organised business to me.  I have inherited a list of fantastic stallholders and I am looking forward to working with them and also to welcoming new sellers on board too.

The aim of this blog is to share the experience of the Independent Markets with both stallholders and customers, so please feel free to comment and if you would like to be a guest blogger, that would be great.  This is an extra place for you to promote the products you will be selling at the Godalming events.  I will also use this blog to add links to websites, articles and blog posts that I feel may be of interest to both customers and stallholders.  If you come across information that you would like me to publish on this blog, please do get in touch with me; this may be something you feel works well at craft events or great ideas for promoting what we make and sell.  Please remember to ask permission of the owner of the article, website or blog before you recommend its publication on here.

Anna had plans to hold markets in other venues outside of Godalming and I will continue with this.  She had already identified some other great places which are ideal for our sort of market, but if you know of any other venues in Surrey that you think would be suitable, please let me know.  Ideally we want somewhere that is either in or very close to a shopping centre or in a residential area, has plenty of parking and is well known.  I stress well known because there are some venues that are poorly sign-posted and this cans affect the footfall.

The dates for this year's events at the Godalming Borough Hall are as follows:


Saturday, 5 April 2014
Saturday, 7 June 2014
Saturday, 6 September 2014
Saturday, 4 October 2014
Saturday, 22 November 2014
Saturday, 6 December 2014

I hope to be posting on this blog at least once a week, so do come back to catch up with the progress of this year's events.

Have a good week everyone

Jill