The importance of networking and knowledge sharing at makers' markets.

At our table at Artisan Market, St Andrews

Hello, everyone, sorry for the extended gap in my blog posts, things have been pretty hectic in the early part of 2025 and every time I have went to blog, I have felt a bit of writers' block and didn't want to just blog for the sake of it. I am pleased to say that I now have plenty of news to catch you all up on, so let's begin.

At the start of February, Shelley and I attended our first market in St Andrews, the Artisan Market in St Andrews Town Hall. We first visited this market in November and we were incredibly impressed by the organisation, the quality of the makers on display, the footfall and of course the clientele who were far more attuned to the market segment we craved. We invested some of our recent sales revenue in getting some flyers printed for the market, at Shelley's suggestion. This turned out to be a genius idea, as many of our visitors took a flyer away with them and we could see that people had read the flyer, visited our social media sites, and browsed our various online shops in the days following the market. They added an air of professionalism to our table, and provided a very valuable way to demonstrate our product and how it looks in the home, plus how it is made and introduced Shelley as the creative force behind it all.

After the demoralising experience of our trial run at the smaller local market in December, we were anxious as to how things would go in St Andrews. I am pleased to say that we made a few sales at the event, which we were so pleased about. We sold three of our picture frames, not any of our boards, but I was so pleased for Shelley who got the much deserved pleasure of seeing something that she had imagined in her head, taken the time to lovingly make and finish to her usual impeccable standards strike a chord with a complete stranger who liked it so much they wanted to purchase it. It was a much needed sign from the universe that we are on the right path and that people really love what Shelley makes. We had a few near misses where customers were genuinely on the cusp of buying a noticeboard, but didn't - but the fact that we were such a curiosity and got so many compliments was very motivating. It really helps that we plan to be at this market multiple times this year, indeed, we are there again in March, on the standby list for April, and have applications pending for May and June.

The most valuable experience we had at the market however was being introduced to the fantastic community that welcomed us with such warmth and kindness. We were very touched by how friendly everyone was to us both and how they were genuinely invested in helping us to reach our potential. I wanted to say a particular thank you to Sharon from lunabuloona (www.instagram.com/lunabuloona) who was so lovely to us both and who went out of her way to suggest some markets we should apply for. I am pleased to say that one of her suggestions, Craft & Flea (https://www.thecraftandflea.com), proved to be very good and we are appearing at their next event in Edinburgh, at the Assembly Rooms, on March 16th.

We now have our market strategy planned out for the rest of 2025 and we are targeting a few markets, but attending them regularly.

Artisan Market St Andrews

Support The Makers Portobello

Craft & Flea Edinburgh

Bowhouse St Monans

The Night Market Edinburgh

Stockbridge Market Edinburgh

Wyldethistle Market David Livingstone Birthplace Museum, Blantyre

This way we can build up name recognition with the same customer base and start to make friendships amongst the makers at these markets.

Folksy Shopfront

I have almost completed building our Folksy shop, which can be viewed at the following address (https://folksy.com/shops/prettyasapictureboard). Folksy was reccomended to us and I am impressed by its intuitive UI (user interface) and its decision to take less commission from its makers' sales. This may eventually replace one of our other shops, but for the foreseeable future, you can find us on Etsy, Not On The High Street and Folksy. Talking of Not On The High Street, we were thrilled to sell our first products on the platform in the week running up to our St Andrews visit. These were noticeboards, not picture frames, and they gave us further reassurance that our products have an audience. My challenge is to be able to do everything I can to help us reach that audience and reach it consistently.

We also sold our first item through, incredibly, our website! This, despite the fact that I have loads to do to address the SEO shortcomings of the website, so someone, somewhere had found our website and browsed it and bought something!

We have just launched the first items in our 2025 Spring Collection, which are available at our website and all of our online shops.

The Ailsa

The Rue

The Isla

The Alice

The Sophie

Clockwise from top left: The Ailsa, The Rue, The Isla, The Sophie, The Alice

Shelley is hard at work on more designs for the 2025 Spring Collection and is also developing some products for Mother's Day (for our next market visits to St Andrews and Edinburgh) as well as new product ideas which we hope to roll out over the next 6 months to our website and our online shops.

So 2025 is starting to take shape as what could be a very good year for the business and has reinvigorated the both of us to keep working hard to achieve our goals.