The difference between struggling and success can be good market practices. What makes for a good farmers’ market? Certainly a strong and supportive base of shoppers is an essential ingredient. Yet demand for products is simply the fuel. How well the market is organized is the engine. Some engines waste fuel whereas others are efficient […]
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Dependent markets versus independent markets
February 9, 2004 CategoriesConsider for a moment the way farmers’ markets are organized. Not whether or how they are incorporated, not how many or what kind of members they have, but rather how and whether the membership is involved in the management of the business of being a farmers’ market. There seems to be two general categories: those […]
Don’t Use Hanson Hanging Scales
December 22, 1992 Categoriesby Tom Roberts, Selling Outdoors, 1992. The first issue of Selling Outdoors contained an article about the State Bureau of Weights and Measures ruling on the Hanson scales that are commonly used at farmers’ markets. That ruling made it clear that in 1992 there should be no more Hanson hanging scales in use at markets. […]
U or I? The shape of your market
December 22, 1990 Categoriesby Tom Roberts (article from 1990’s Selling Outdoors) Larger markets, those with more than six or eight members regularly attending, often abandon the straight line style setup of smaller markets. Instead, they adopt a double line or “U” shape, where the marketers set up in two lines with displays facing one another. Orono and Camden […]
To peddle or not to peddle
December 22, 1990 Categoriesby Tom Roberts (from 1990’s Selling Outdoors) Whether to allow market members to buy some or all of what they sell could be a hotly debated subject or an easy consensus. Which occurs at your market depends upon your market’s history and its current makeup, as well as on your members’ vision of what your […]