#thats not what people gp to flea markets for!!!!

[plushie-lovey]

Went to a flea market yesterday hoping to come home with a bunch of plushies. Found one (1) zodiac beanie babie rat that looks like the embodiment of an acid trip (I mean that in the best way possible)

[tricityrevivals]

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Chapter 1.7: The Elephants Trunk Flea Market

So as we’ve said before we weren’t sure if we would ever do another flea market. Well, we decided to pickup and try out the Elephants Trunks Flea Market in New Milford, Connecticut. Heres a brutally honest review of our experience as vendors there.

To start, we paid for a “reserved vendor space” which basically means you are guaranteed one of the 100 spaces available. For those of you who don’t know, as a vendor if you don’t pay for a reserved space you basically wait in a line of hundreds of cars waiting to get in. If the field fills up and you haven’t passed the line yet, they turn you around and send you home. Thats something we didn’t want to risk. 

We brought 90% of our inventory with us and had to rent a 14 foot box truck. The whole truck rental process was a nightmare. I’m not going to sit here and call out the company but lets just say we were given a quote, and when we went to pickup the truck quote changed. Different people were working different days so I guess there was some miscommunication. Also, we went an hour and a half early to see if we could pickup the truck early the day before. They said we would be charged another days fee if we wanted to pickup now instead of in an hour and half. Something I really don’t understand is a business that doesn’t work with its customers. I mean, the truck was literally just sitting in the lot, no one else had it reserved, and that hour and a half would have given us a good head start on loading hundreds of items. Also we were paying for the gas and all the fees so for an extra hour or so they wanted to charge us about another hundred and something dollars. We wound up leaving and coming back an hour later to pickup.

After spending pretty much all day loading up the truck Saturday, we called it a night knowing we had to be up and on the road at 3AM. Reserved vendors have to be in their spot by 4:30AM.

Around 3AM Luke showed up outside my house in the Truck with two of our good friends in another pickup that were going to help that day. We started the ride to New Miford, Connecticut. 

It was an EXPERIENCE driving that 14 foot truck to New Milford, Connecticut. First off, something we really didn’t think about was that it was an 11 foot tall truck, and our GPS was taking us the way of passenger vehicles. It wasn’t until we saw a low clearance sign (8 Feet) going 65 MPH on a highway that we may have a problem finding a route to the Flea Market. We had to pull off the highway and take the side roads of NY State, which was one of the nicest small towns  we’ve come across. After taking a few detours we finally arrived around 4:30AM.

We pull up happy that we are there and the people running the Flea Market shut down our hopes immediately. They won’t let our two friends in to help unload, and they notify us that with this truck we are going to have about 6 feet only of a 20'x20’ space to display our items. The numbers weren’t adding up and we just agreed to get in and start up our day. When we pull up to our spot we asked the guy directing traffic is we could purchase another space next to us. We realized these spaces were definitely not 20 feet by 20 feet as they described online. They were cramming vendors in as tight as possible. We wound up purchasing another space, not something we wanted to do but it was a necessity. 

The vendors here we noticed throughout the day all know each other. They are regulars, and when they see fresh meat pull up everyone wants to see the items they have. We had a bunch of people waiting outside of our truck much like you would see on storage wars waiting for us to open the back of our truck. They all had flashlights because it was still dark at the time. Before we even unloaded the truck people were buying items from us. About 10-12 of our items literally came out of our truck and onto theirs. It was great start to the day. 

Myself and Luke continued to unload all the items and we had everything set up by about 6:00AM. What took us 5-6 hours to load the day before took us about an hour to unload. 

Early on in the Flea Market, you have all your dealers, vendors, and store owners walking around. This is where you’re going to make the majority of you’re money. By 10am I think we made about 80% of the total money we took home that day. From 10am-2pm we made the other 20%. It was a long four hours of window shoppers, but we were happy to have potential buyers and get compliments on our stuff. 

The Flea Market itself is packed. At an Estimated 10-15 Thousand people a day walking around this was definitely what we liked to see. The prior Flea Market at Allaire State Park we were lucky to see even a quarter of those people. Most of the people were friendly, others not, but in the end everyone is looking for a deal. Thats what I think sticks out most in this whole experience. People are tight with their money, and I understand that in this day and age, but certain items we can bend on others we can’t. Thats what a lot of people don’t understand for us as vendors.

Make no mistake about it, we were priced to sell, everything was, we probably had the cheapest prices we’ve ever had on our items. I guess just some people aren’t willing to spend and really depends on the crowd that day. I know we talked to a few friendly vendors around us and they said the crowd was smaller and cheaper than usual. Maybe we just had bad luck with a day. 

I’m not saying we did bad. We had a really really good day. We still took home the majority of our stuff but we made a lot of money. It also cost us a good amount though as well. Renting a truck. Paying for a double spot. Gas. All the miscellaneous costs. Would we do it again? Maybe, but it was a long and tiring day. It was a 20 hour day when it was all said and done, including travel. Thats something we have to take into account. If we did do it again we’d probably have to tweak a few things, but its all a learning experience. We had a lot of fun, and we had the support of our two friends all day, as well as my wife and Lukes girlfriend take the ride up to support us (and definitely shop as well). Overall it was a great experience for it being our first time-we may do it again, or we may try out Brimfield the next time around, but we’re definitely not ready after this experience to call it quits on flea market possibilities just yet.