I felt like I was on “The Apprentice”! I got into the city centre around 8am. Which is early for me to be in town, but it wasn’t early for all the experienced trades-people. They’d been there since six, fitting their stalls together, setting up their tables and displaying their wares. They all had vans or trailers, I had to borrow the boot space of a kind volunteer and their car. The very kind owner of the Little Sweet Shop Company loaned me a spare gazebo, which he even helped me to set up too. What a nice man! Once the gazebo was up I then spent about half an hour or so putting up my fold out table, getting out my stock, setting it up and generally faffing around with the placement and display. Which I kept on tweaking throughout the entire day. I watched the early morning stream of pedestrians go back and forth. An average of 23 people passed in front of the stall every single minute in the morning, that definitely increased as the day went on. It was Saturday after all. Soon town was heaving with shoppers and students and every one in between. There must have been thousands of people going past over the course of the day. The early morning shoppers weren’t up for browsing or deviating from their plans, they clearly had somewhere to be or something specific to buy and they had eyes only for that. Everyone else was probably still at home having a weekend lie in. It wasn’t until lunchtime that the browsers emerged and saw the new stall in Lancaster market. People really seemed to like my “geek chic” merchandise, and a lot of people didn’t realise that I’d actually designed everything myself. One browser asked me “do you do any One Direction t-shirts?”, alas, I’m afraid not. It was a great day, chatted to a lot of people, gave out many, many business cards and leaflets. Saw plenty of people that I knew and many more that I didn’t, the weather was pleasant too – which helped. Eventually the day ended and I packed everything back up again, happily there was a lot less to put away. If I had a van, and a gazebo, and I could drive, and I had free time – then I’d definitely do it again. As it stands though, I’m not going to appear regularly, but I’ll let you know if I’ve got any special market days planned. The next time I’ll be behind a stall will be at the Kendal comic art festival on the 18th and 19th October. 🙂
Jack Knight Graphics 