We hadn’t a
chance to breathe since our Countdown 2015 Marina Waterfront Bazaar, as we
jumped straight into preparation for the ONE KM Mall + MORE Bazaar, as well as
Flea & Easy @ Chinatown, as well as engaging new venues and organisations
who made enquiries on collaborations…etc
*whew !*
Anyways, on
to the topic we were supposed to chat about.
There are
indoor and outdoor bazaars / markets / fleas / bazaars / roadshows. We’re not here to judge which ones are good,
or which ones are crap… not in this post anyway.
Indoors
Spaces for
bazaars are located under shelter, sometimes in air-conditioned
environment. Some venues come with good
organic crowd as malls, others such as 111 Somerset and F1 pit
building, museums do not (Organisers who can bring crowd to such places have regular followers and vendors, so they sometimes have a community spirit among them. This is good. The downside is that your physical business is only exposed to a limited range of audience).
Let’s talk
about malls…
Malls
treat their indoor space like precious metals or stones and when they offer
space for bazaars / roadshows to external organisers, it will come with a
string of terms and conditions.
Why? They have to protect their tenants’
interest, because rental income is the cash cow of any shopping mall. They will also stipulate the opening time of
your bazaar, ensure that your booths are well presented, and will curate your
merchandise mix like crazy.
A long
list of dos and do-nots.
That makes
shopping malls a pain to work with because you can’t be selling what you want to
sell and you have to do what they want you to do. And to us organisers, we notice they always ask for the
same stuff – artisans, handicraft, unique, vintage items…etc , but do not
realize that there are limited number of artisan vendors in the market to go
around.
Malls also demand
that vendors also open their booths on time – but we think this is fair because
they have a promise to fulfill to their shoppers. So vendors who are habitually
late will be frowned upon, and perhaps be eventually blacklisted.
The malls
that invite bazaar / flea market organisers to run a market within their mall
is really to create a more unique offering to their shoppers – imagine you were
a shopper and you went to the mall to see the same shops, the same brands every
day – how long does it take before you lose interest in the mall?
That’s why it is in the interest of malls to keep refreshing their
offerings, for them to organize promotions and events, to create experiences
that are interesting. So given their budget (many malls we know are very stingy
when it comes to them spending money) they’ll find ways and means to work with
event manager / organisers as well as flea market / bazaar organisers and
create business models (invisible to the man in the street) to maximize their
returns on investment. Only under very rare circumstances, mall management would go for win-win.
For vendors
who are already selling stuff in bazaars and road shows in malls – you would
already have developed your own business system, including making manpower
arrangements to manage this. Imagine
yourself at your booth 7 days or more in row, listening to the same piped in
music, jingles all day…
So for
aspiring entrepreneurs who are thinking of going into roadshow / bazaar /
gondola sales on a full time basis, here’s what we discovered: As lucrative it may sound to you in terms of
sales, remember if you have insufficient manpower to man your booth, you are
going to experience fatigue after being in the same place for a consecutive
number of days (many organizer have a minimum number of days for bookings) and
the number of hours you need to spend manning your booths (9 to 12 hours).
So you
might want to consider working with a booth re-seller / agent who will help to
meet the requirements of the organizer if you cannot commit to the full number
of days stipulated in the block - booking. BEWARE of untrustworthy
agents.
For folks in
the events / advertising industry in Singapore, the good news is that there are
still lots of projects for you from malls. The bad news – your margins is in a
high chance of getting thinner.
So the next
time you put in an integrated proposal to any mall – do consider partnering a
bazaar organizer, preferably one who understands what your business and their
businesses are about. We can complement your strategy and tactics.
We'll talk about indoor open spaces the next time.
