What is The Great American
Market?
Before we can review anything we must know what it is exactly.
Story time with Cecilia,
During one of my trips to the Owl’s Nest Antique stores in Topeka, I happen to meet a wandering vendor who was parked outside the store selling her collection of random antiques. The sweet lady told us all about the market in Emporia and encouraged us to check it out. This was back in the early days of spring.
The market caught my attention not just to explore, but to possibly join as a vendor! A few months later, I bought a booth slot and convinced another author friend of mine to join me as well.
Now that we know about the market existences, what is it exactly?
The Great American Market is a large vendors market hosted once a year in Emporia, Ks. Vendors of all walks of life take their positions next to each other all the way up the main street selling their services, and products.
Here’s the Emporia website to check out for the newest updates:
Now let’s get to the important stuff
Especially for those of you who want to either join the market one of these years.
Is the Great American Market, first-time vendor friendly? Was it organized?
Two very important questions since vendors markets can range from anything goes to strict rules must be followed.
The Great American Market, in my experience as a first-time vendor was extremely organized. Which was AMAZING!!
I’d like to give a 5+ star review to the team of awesome people who organizes this event.
For backstory info: I have attended a few events as a vendor in the past. Mainly doing a booth at my Church’s annual The Christ the King Festival. Which is where people have booths representing the different countries, the Faith, the culture, and food.
My booths have been South Korea, and Japan. Which I did for three years. It was a blast! I loved it so much.
I planned and built my booths, with the help of my Dad and brothers. We actually build the booth front out of wood, keeping it as close as possible to the look of one of the historical buildings from the country we were representing. It took time, painting and research, but I must say, my booths looked Fabulously beautiful the day of.
So, for context, I know the work that goes into creating and managing a booth for large events. Organization is one of the biggest keys to vendors success and The Great American Market team has organization down.
The event managers sent out emails a few months before the event to remind everyone it was coming up. And about 1 email per week the month of the event.
I even had time to do a pre-booth set up a week before the event.
The emails had directions, booth layout pictures, information about all the vendors and where we all were located on main street.
I believe it was two or three weeks before the event that they had the booths layout finalized, the start time for event and the rest of the details for the day.
Start time for set up was 4:30am. The event started at 7am and ended at 4pm.
Vendors names were marked in chalk on the road the day of.
There volunteers all around to help all day.
Since I invited my author friend Emma to the event 2 months after I signed up, I asked if we could be placed next to each other if possible. They did so, making our first event together ideal in everyway.
To my left there was a couple selling wax melts, their booth layout was professional and eye catching.
To my right was Emma Loura, my fellow Author friend, handing out her business cards like a pro.
Was this worth it?
For my purpose, Author meet and Greet. Yes this event was absolutely worth it.
The price was reasonable, $70 per 12 ft x 15ft space.
Electricity is an extra 10 dollars.
Will I be back?
I cannot answer that yet. But, I will come back next year as a vendor if I can. We shall see what the future brings.
What did I learn?
Hmmm I learned:
- Amazon sells tent/booth weights. In Kansas you need more than 15lbs weights on each tent leg. Kansas wind is not friendly.
- Say “Good Morning” to every single person who passes your booth. It really helps brighten the day and get conversations going.
- Comfort over fashion, especially for the shoes.
- Hand your business cards out or at least point them out while you talk.
- bring some snacks and water, sometimes you have no energy to walk around the event for food.
- Mindset, have the goal of just having a good day meeting some new people.
Introvert Author approved?
Absolutely! The event was organized and I had plenty of time to prepare. The people were friendly, and over all the entire event felt relaxed. Even with all the booth spaces being filled, there was more than enough room between each vendor that you never felt cramped.
What’s Next?
For me, hopefully more events like this! I jumped into The Great American Market with both feet, no idea how it was going to turn out. SUCCESS!
Now I’d like to join more vendors markets around Kansas and in the future go to an event all about authors and their books.
For the rest of this year, I’m going to focus on completing, and marketing my new Ya book, Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits. While looking into 2023, the events that are near enough for me to go to that will help get the word out about my books and author career. Hopefully leading to a successful career as a full time author with many new friends.
Full time Author ~ Here I come.
Thank you for reading until the end. As a new blogger any and all support is appreciated and welcome.
Write on~
Cecilia
