Our FIRST Indoor Market Experience

As a stallholder (and even as a customer), I am typically found attending outdoor markets. It comes from personal preference to say that wind, rain or shine, I enjoy the freedom of the open air. There are many perks and pitfalls to outdoor market stalls, and it entirely depends on your specific needs to determine whether indoor or outdoor spaces are suitable for you. For us, outdoors is best! With that said, I have attended an indoor market before, and it most certainly wasn’t the end of the world.

A picture of our set up from the day.

In 2022, we attended the Ingle Farm Mother’s Day Market, hosted by the Mawson Lakes Rotary. This event took place on the 30th of April at the Ingle Farm Recreation Centre. The spacious location allowed for food trucks outside the main building and had stallholders across three different courts within the building.

As we had never attended an indoor market before, and our typical setup relies heavily on our gazebo to display our shawls, we had to make some additional preparations.

With the market being held within a gymnasium, we wanted to take some precautions as to not damage the polished flooring. All of our market tables have rubber on the ends, so it wasn’t likely that we would damage the gymnasium floor, but we still wanted to take precautions. We found some chair leg protectors, which fit well on the ends of our tables, ensuring that nothing would be damaged at our stall! We have all of them tucked away in our market gear for any and all future indoor events.

Our shawls on display at the market.

Without the use of our gazebo, we had to think of another way to display our shawls. And for that, we chose to purchase mannequins as well as a portable clothes rack for the event. Even three years later, the mannequins have become a staple piece of our market setup. The clothes rack, we mainly have reserved for indoor stalls, but it is very easy to pack away and transport to events!

Prior to the event, we went to the Ingle Farm Recreation Centre to determine the parking situation and how far we would need to walk to and from the building during the set up. It was a bit of a walk, and with all of our market equipment, we wanted to make the set up and pack down of the event as seamless as possible. And so, we invested in a market cart – and it has been one of the greatest purchases in our whole market event journey. It made the event and every event since significantly easier and faster to set up and pack down, which is exactly what you want to save time and energy!

With all that preparation, it was time for the big day!

We arrived early and eagerly waited for our turn to begin setting up, in which we were shown our spot for the day. With the use of the cart, we were able to quickly and effectively begin our set up. There was a lot of walking back and forth, but far less than there would have been without it.

The pink bee in the centre found his forever home at this market!

Between the two of us, we kept one person at our stall space and setting up at all times.

As our first indoor market, it was also the first market that we had all four of our sides ‘exposed’ to customers. Typically, we would have one, two or three sides open to customers, leaving the back for our personal belongings and the like. But with the opportunity of all four sides available to the public, it meant we had far more stock out for people to choose from!

One of the greatest struggles I had during this event wasn’t with the market itself, but the unfortunate timings of a medication I was trialling at the time. If you have read one of our earlier posts “Tale of a Terrible Market Day” you would have read a bit about my experiences with anxiety. This was a precursor to that blog, and another challenging experience as a result of my mental health, which I am not ashamed to reflect upon publicly.

Approaching the event, I had been put on new medication which was a significant journey in itself. Each new dose presented a new set of unpleasant symptoms, from devastating mood swings to pure exhaustion. And throughout the event and the lead up to the big day, I felt so anxious. I was having daily panic attacks, and coupled with the inability to feel hungry (quite possibly one of the oddest side effects from a medication I have ever had), I really wasn’t on the top of my game! I thought it must have been nerves from attending our first ever indoor market, but when the weekend was said and done and I still couldn’t ‘keep calm and carry on crafting’, I knew the medication and I definitely were not compatible.

An octo that was sold on the day!

During the event, particularly in the quiet moments we had, I felt so unsettled. I wanted to fidget and had to take a lot of deep breaths to keep the panic at bay, because it didn’t feel like I was getting enough air in my lungs otherwise! The best parts of that day were definitely the busier moments, because it helped to keep my mind off of these unfortunate side effects.

If we ever have the opportunity to attend another indoor market, I hope I am in a better state of health. I enjoyed the day, but I know a lot of my memory of it has been obscured by what was happening internally. My racing heart, swirling nausea and the constant fight to not descend into a panicked state were significant distractions from the present moment and the market atmosphere that I love so much. That being said, I can still remember many of the sales we made from the day. Three in particular that stand out is an octopus centrepiece I made, a large crochet bee (pictured above and named Heimlich by one of our regular customers) as well as a pair of earrings that would be going to a stallholder I see quite regularly now at the Magill Sunrise Market: Michelle from Craft Kits for Kids.

Thank you for reading about our first indoor market experience, with an honourable mention to the disaster that was my mental health in 2022. That market, despite the internal trials of my health, holds a special place in my heart because it was a market milestone for us!

Kimberley (they/them)

Accessories by Antoinette