I’m just west of Paris. Nice to meet a fellow Canuck! Farmers markets are great, except that most of them around here only operate in the summer and they’re usually outside. Not so good from a dust, rain and wind perspective. I do a year-round indoor farmer’s market in Woodstock. There’s also one in Brantford. Unfortunately, the waiting lists for both of those are over a year long now. Then once you get in, it takes a very long time to become established — it took me 2 years just to cover my table fee most weeks, but I’ve stuck it out and now I do sort of okay. The real benefit is that people from local stores and galleries saw my stuff at the market and asked if they could sell my stuff in their stores. Uh, gee… okay!

I heard about a flea market held at the Butterball Restaurant in Jordan’s Hollow south of Hamilton on Sundays from May to November. I have wanted to take a look at it. I am mentioning it because a lady swooped down on my table one day and said I would do really, really well there, in particular because it’s not like a typical flea market where you’d be going head to head with resellers of cheap junk jewellery. I still haven’t made it there. I often have to work Sundays at my “real” job.

Selling handcrafted jewellery anywhere now is really, really hard, tons of competition, and especially selling at farmer’s markets where it’s mostly cash and most people only bring enough to buy their groceries. Having an Interac machine is way to expensive for me. Contact me via email (bemacdougall @ gmail.com) if you want some more local information. There are lots of venues I’ve heard about (Locke Street in Hamilton, in particular). They all have their pluses and minuses (high table fee is the worst, but Locke Street in particular delivers bodies), but I need more information about what level you’re at, what you’re selling, price point, etc.

If you Google “Ontario farmers markets” you can find a list of all of them and links to their websites/vendor information. The Ontario Crafts Council I think it is puts out an annual list of all fairs and shows. There are also other companies who put on shows, but be careful there as you’ll discover that “handcrafted” applies equally to third-world sweat-shop produced handcrafted jewellery, and you’ll be selling next to Avon and Silpata and other party-type vendors. Since when is Pampered Chef a handcrafted business???

Oh, yeah — think about joining local bead societies. I belong to the Grand River Bead Society in Guelph, and there are a lot of super jewellery designers that belong, along with store owners and they put on an annual bead and jewellery show at the end of October, and have a sliding scale of table fees, even 1/2 tables are available. So, yeah, email me!

Barbara

I live in Kitchener – not so far away.

Have you considered a market? The ones in smaller cities are smaller, of course, and usually only open on Saturdays. The St. Jacob’s market is open more than one day. I can’t tell you the price because I haven’t enquired. I think it has a waiting list, but you could place yourself on it if interested.