Posts Tagged ‘International Trade and Market Group’
Flea Markets and the Wholesale Strategy
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
When Manuella Lizzio co-founded the International Trade and Marketing Group (ITMG) in 2001, she originally conceptualized it to be an exporter. But when inspiration struck Lizzio to design a line of handbags, the Rockville, Md.-based company soon had to figure out if her vision could sell.
“The main goal of the company was really to do wholesale as opposed to retail,” Lizzio said, “but to make something that’s really tailored to the consumer would imply that we really want to get into that retail mentality.”
Two years later the Bethesda Flea Market, hosted by the Montgomery Farm Women’s Cooperative, would become Lizzio’s testing ground. While selling five to ten handbags would have sufficed, her stand sold 15 handbags on the first of three days she spent there.
“It was just a good way of really seeing how people react to the designs that we were trying to start with,” she said.
Shoppers across the United States can now visit more than 2,000 flea markets, with each of them hosting hundreds of vendors. And while they are typically known to house antiques and vintage wares, flea markets have also slowly become promising venues for aspiring wholesalers, with any sort of merchandise.
Over the past year, the number of flea market shoppers has grown by 2.3 percent, while the number of vendors has grown by 1.2 percent. And with the number of sources for antiques and vintage wares dwindling, now more than two-thirds of vendors sell new merchandise they get from various suppliers, said John Schoen, executive director of the National Flea Market Association.
According to Schoen, the industry flourishes a little during an economic downturn because today’s flea market shopper and vendor are both looking to save money. “Shoppers say, ‘I’ll be going to the flea market because I can get what I want for my family, for a lot less money.’”
Meanwhile, vendors are likely selling at flea markets for supplemental income. Jerry Stokes, National Flea Market Association founder, stands convinced that the flea market provides the cheapest, easiest way to start a business, being “the landlord for the entrepreneur vendor.”
The Pasadena City College Flea Market – which regularly hosts over 450 vendors – charges $70 to $100 for space ranging from 17-by-16 to 17-by-32 square feet. Meanwhile, the San Jose Flea Market charges anywhere from $20 to $75 for a space approximately 17-by-20 square feet.
“If a person is going to get into a business, they have to rent a storefront. They gotta get a license, they gotta get the overhead, they gotta have a lot of money to start up,” Stokes said. “But a [flea market] vendor, they can rent a booth and they can be in business.”
For the past ten years, Stokes has worked to create representation of the flea market industry. Since founding the association, he has created a number of online resources for flea market vendors, including Vendors Only and Find a Flea Market. Suppliers of anything from closeout apparel to sporting goods have also begun noting that they sell to flea market vendors – or, like AAA Flea Market Supply, work solely with them.
Meanwhile, Lizzio and a number of jewelry designers she met in Bethesda have since moved on to wholesale efforts, thanks to the responses they received.
“Just staying in your community is sometimes the best way to begin something,” Lizzio said, “and the flea market just presented itself as a pretty good opportunity to do that.
Tags: AAA Flea Market Supply, Business, buying wholesale, christina lee, Find a Flea Market, flea market business, flea markets, International Trade and Market Group, ITMG, Jerry Stokes, John Schoen, Manuella Lizzio, National Flea Market Assocation, Pasadena City College Flea Market, San Jose Flea Market, Vendors Only
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