When: Saturday, March 30th | 10am-4pm
Where: 1100 Railroad Ave, Bellingham, WA 98225
Join us for an exciting day of shopping, art, food and community at the first Makers Market of 2024! The second annual Spring Makers Market at the Depot will be held on Saturday, March 30th from 10pm to 4pm.
We are renting both the building and the outdoor space, so there will be three kinds of booth spaces: indoors, outdoors under the parking shed roofs, and outdoors with your canopy.
Important Dates and Times:
· Applications due: 01/31/2024
· Notification of application status – either accepted, waitlist, or declined: 2/7/2024
· Vending fees due: 2/14/2024
· Vending fees become non-refundable two weeks before market: 3/16/2024
· Market date: March 30, 2024, 10am-4pm
· Load-in times: TBD
· Load-out: Vendors are not permitted to start breaking down before the market closes. Any vendors breaking down early will not be accepted in future markets we host.
Other Important Details:
· Application fee: $10 (This is non-refundable and covers our time to review and curate applications, and the cost of using Manage My Market.) You will be asked further down if you want to allow Bellingham Makers Market to autocharge your credit card for fees such as the application fee and the booth fee. You have the option of checking the box or not. If you do not, you will be directed to the Accounts section on the left side, and will be able to pay the invoices with your credit card there.
· Vending fees:
· 10 x 10 indoors - $125
· 10 x 10 outdoors, canopy required - $75
· 9.5 x 10 covered, (under the parking shed roofs), no canopy - $75
Your business must be registered in WA and you must have a UBI number and be able to collect your own sales tax.
We are using Manage My Market as market hosts for the first time. Many of you will also be using it for the first time as a vendor. Please let us know if you can't figure something out or if it appears that we've set something up incorrectly.
We are beyond delighted that our little event hosting company has become known for putting on quality markets. Thank you, Bellingham makers, for all the support! But this also means that it is becoming more competitive to get in. We had so many applications for our holiday markets that we split the accepted vendors into two groups and only assigned each vendor to one market, and still had a long waitlist. So please think of your application the way you would think of a job application. You are trying to persuade us with your photos and your answers to the questions why we should select you. We want to see by your photos that your products are high quality and that your booth looks professional and that you have plenty of inventory. We have to make a lot of difficult decisions as we go through our curating process. Just because you participated in one of our previous markets is not a guarantee of acceptance. Our focus is to bring together the highest quality experience for shoppers that we can, gathered from all the amazing talent in our area.
This market is open to handmade makers, artists and artisans. Handmade means that the product was physically created by the seller. Obviously in the process of hand making our items, all of us use some bought supplies and components. But we want to showcase vendors who are pouring their creative energies into what they sell. If you are the designer, but the manufacturing of the product is outsourced to a third party, please let us know.
We believe that having our vendors promote the market is key to bringing the shoppers! Participating vendors are required to promote the market on their social media at least three out of four designated times. We will email you four different times with a graphic and suggested text for you to post that day or the next day. We will do our part too by advertising on local online events calendars, reaching out to news sources, putting up posters and flyers, and contacting our growing list of shoppers who gave us their emails to learn about upcoming markets.
You must be reachable via email. All notifications and reminders will be sent via email from BMM@bellinghammakersmarket.com or from noreply@managemymarket.com. When you fill out the application form, please enter an email address that you check regularly. If you miss a deadline because an email went to your spam, junk or gmail's 'promotions' folder, we will assume that you are no longer interested in participating, and will offer your place to a vendor on the waitlist.
The booth photo is a required part of your application. We will not consider your application without a booth photo. We want to see your products beautifully displayed in your canopy, with all your signage. If you haven't created a booth photo before, there are lots of tips online. We will be using this photo to help us understand the quantity and variety of products you sell, and to visualize how it will look in a row of booths. Impress us!
To start, go to Manage My Market and create a login (username and password).
Once you have created your login, click on Profile on the left, and fill out the four tabs: Company Info, Business Info, Contacts, and Addresses.
The next step is to upload your booth photo and your product photos under the Products tab. From the left column, select Products. The button to Add Product is over on the far right in the lighter green bar. If anything seems a little confusing about the way the products are set up, we learned that Manage My Market was created in 2008 to manage farmers markets, so their early focus was on food and farm products. Probably a lot of you will want to choose Arts & Crafts from the dropdown, then select appropriate categories. Some of the subcategories seem to duplicate themselves, for example, Fine Jewelry, Jewelry, and then Jewelry made with various materials. We aren't too concerned with what you choose here, as long as it's reasonably close to what you make. The main thing is to upload your beautiful product photos here. There's also a field to add additional information about your product.
We also need you to upload your booth photo in this section. For your booth photo, please click Add Products again, then choose Miscellaneous, and scroll down just a bit to Booth Photo.
Now you’re ready to apply to our market! Go to My Markets, and click on Apply to a Market. The system organizes the markets in order by closest to your address/location, so if you live around Bellingham, the BMM market will probably be at the top of the list. Click on Apply Now, and you'll see all the market details.
There are some useful tutorials that you can access on the left column.
If you have questions about the application, feel free to email us at bmm@bellinghammakersmarket.com.
LINK TO APPLY: