In my early 20's, I started in retail sales at a flea market (some call them swap meets).  It was cheap at $75 for the weekend and there was no long term lease obligation to be worried about if my business didn't work.  I spent about four months there and during this time I learned a lot about how this business works.

 

The main business I ran was sand art, basically for kids.  We had three tables with a couple dozen plastic bins filled with different colors of sand.  We sold clear long-kneck, glass twisted bottles and kids poured colored sand into them, to make designs.  We sold the bottles for $9 each and the total profit was around $6 a bottle.  We did well the first weekend selling around 125 bottles and earning $750.  After a couple weeks we added small plastic cubes we got for 0.50 and sold for $3, and added a few other products at Christmas time, but the business sales went down week after week until I closed up four months later.

 

Here's what I learned about flea markets.

 

1.) Don't get a space by the door.  People either run in or run right by you, or already spent their daily budget on the way out.


2.) People at flea markets go there for a reason.  They're looking for an incredible deal.  Yard sale prices.  They're also looking for unique products.  In my opinion, this devalues anything you sell and makes it harder to get a fair price for it, unless the product is so unique and original that they can't find it anywhere else.


3.) Too many window shoppers.  Most of the adults in a mall go there to buy something and they do.  Most of the people in a flea market go there to walk around and just look at all the junk and most don't buy anything. 


4.) Here's the main reason why my business failed.  The decent foot traffic was repeat traffic.  You don't think about that when you first start up there.  You just see a lot of people and think business will be good.  After a month, I saw 70% of everyone who went there for the year because the same people came back every month, some every week!  This means that after a month, sales drops way off because you're seeing all the same people again. 


5.) Too much competition.  Whatever you sold, ten other people were selling it too and that waters down the price you can sell your merchandise for.  Plus it meant people were hesitant to buy from you.  They'd always say they'd be back then go to every other vendor selling the same thing to get the same item for the least price they could.  Once someone left my table they never came back.


6.) Lack of confidence in sellers.  Anything under $20 is fine, but people are hesitant to spend good money, like $100, on an item because the seller may not be there next week if the person wants to return it.

7.) No long term leases.  This is good but it could be bad too.  I knew a guy who started selling unfinished wood, lawn

furniture in his flea market space.  It went so well that by the end of three month he had 10 spaces rented!  Well, the owner of the flea market, not content with the 10 space rentals this guy was paying for, basically the owner of the flea market threw him out and started selling this exact same furniture at the back of the flea market himself.  The ridiculous thing about this is, the 55 year old flea market owner was worth over $100 million dollars.  Some people would say, "Business is business, do whatever you want."  Myself, if I had over $100 million in the bank (with $3 million more coming in every year), I wouldn't cut a small time business owners throat over $5,000 a month.  That's peanuts, especially if he was doing business with me by renting 10 spaces from me.  But you'll see as you read the articles on this webiste, business isn't for the faint of heart.  A business partner, vendor or friend will cut your throat in a heartbeat if given a chance.  Not all will do it, but it happens a lot.

 

Can you make any money at a flea market?

There are so many factors that it's really hard to say.  First off, how much is "any money" to you?  I believe anyone could make $400 a weekend.  For some that's ok and others it's peanuts for a whole weekend of work.  The problem I found is that at older flea markets, anything that IS worth selling, that product is either sold by the flea market owner or a long time established business has prime space and is selling the product.  The flea market won't let you set-up anywhere close to these long time established vendor in their prime space, rather pushing you off in a corner somewhere.  They protect the established businesses by keeping the competition far away from them.  That's the way the flea market business works and there's no way around it.  In other words, any items that make good money, you can't sell them.