I’ve been getting ready for my first market this week. This has mainly involved discovering that I do not, in fact, own enough tablecloth clips, storage bags, or emotional resilience for deciding how many bookmarks is “too many bookmarks.”
No, I've been reading reviews for tablecloth clips and display stands. Wondering if I have enough bags, tissue paper, fairy lights... and whether there's such a thing as too many fairy lights. Working out how many bookmarks can fit in one spinning medieval tower before it becomes structurally questionable (see my last ramble for more on said spinning medieval tower).
There’s a distressing amount of restraint needed for all of this that I very much do not possess.
There Is Something Delightfully Serious About a Tablecloth
When you have an online shop, everything lives on a screen. When you're selling in person, suddenly you need things. A table. A tablecloth. Displays. Signs. Little stands. Business cards. It's surprisingly exciting. Every little addition makes it feel a bit more real.
Like I'm not just making handmade Kindle sleeves, handbound classic novels, and bookish gifts in my room anymore. I'm building an actual little shop that occasionally leaves the house.
The Weirdest Part Was the Price Tags
I expected to enjoy painting the displays. I expected to enjoy arranging everything. What I didn't expect was how strange it would feel putting proper price labels on things I'd made.
Not because of the prices themselves, but because suddenly they looked official. Like they belonged in a real shop. They're attached to products in a real shop. A shop that I own.
It's one of those obvious facts that occasionally catches you completely off guard.
Past Me Would Think This Was Mad
I keep thinking about where I was this time last year.
If you'd shown me a photo of a table covered in my own handmade Kindle sleeves, foiled literary bookmarks, handbound books, and bookish accessories, all neatly labelled and ready for customers, I'd have assumed you were showing me somebody else's business.
Frankly, I was really going through it this time last year, so to now be arguing with myself over whether labels should be 70mm or 80mm wide is a testament to staying the course.
Staying the Course
Running a small handmade business has a funny way of shifting the goalposts.
You launch a website.
Then you want your first sale.
Then you start thinking about markets.
Then displays.
Then branding.
Then table layouts.
There's always another milestone waiting.
It's easy to forget that every one of those things once felt impossibly far away.
Sometimes the biggest progress isn't dramatic. Sometimes it's just ordering more price tags because you've run out.
Hopefully See You There
There's still plenty to do before market day. If nothing else, I have an enormous pile of bookblocks that need cases making, and if I don't tackle that soon, I fear it will gain sentience.
But for the first time, I can properly picture it. A little table full of things I've made. People wandering over. Conversations about books.
Readers finding bookish gifts, handbound books, or a Kindle sleeve they didn't know they needed. (Go off, you funky little SEO legend, you.)
That's a pretty lovely thought.
And if you'd told me this time last year that I'd be stressing over tablecloths, label sizes, and whether my medieval display tower had enough bookmarks on it?
She'd have assumed you had the wrong person. She'd also have been absolutely delighted.
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