Indoor Vendor's Malls

Just doubled the booth space at the vendors mall I sell at. Of course that means double the rent, so I need to double the sales (at least).

Glad the space came available though, the flea market I like has gotten a lot more competative, more vendors/sellers; and really no change in customer traffic.

Thought I would start a new thread about vendor's malls or maybe it should be it's own categorie under "The Marketplace"?

I just noticed over the weekend a indoor vendor mall or I'm assuming something like that opening up.  Is in an old furniture building.  Lots of traffic on the road but not sure how much "traffic" they will have.  May be worth setting some stuff up depending on the price.  Will have to look into it.

I used to frequent an indoor flea market called "Trading Fair" in Houston. Haven't been there in a while but it used to be packed..almost every space was rented and this was a pretty large warehouse/building. I liked the place because it was climate controlled and because all of the vendors booths were neatly organized in rows. This made shopping a lot easier.

Cobia, is the vendor's mall open seven days a week or just on weekends?

Cobia, is the vendor's mall open seven days a week or just on weekends?

It's open 6 days a week. Closed on Wednesday & open half-a-day on Sunday.

Well, that's pretty cool. Do you get much traffic on weekdays? When you're at the auctions, do you have someone who works the store for you or do you just close down?

All I do is bring in new inventory, re-price old inventory and collect checks! The people who run the vendor's mall do the service and sales. They even offer lay-away and delivery. About once or twice a week the will call about a more expensive item, typically furniture, that a customer is interested in and has made an offer below the marked price to see if I will make the deal.

They have only been open since June. Foot traffic seems light to me but I have cleared a profit over expenses 4 out of 5 months there so we will see how it goes. It's a good location, good set-up, reasonable rates, they just need to do more advertising to drive foot traffic in my opinion. That want me to bring in more expensive items to cover my rent, but so far I have not seen the customer base to support more expensive inventory.

So, its more like a large consignment store?

It's an auction house that moved into a larger building and decided to expand their business model by running a vendor's mall 6 days a week, along with their normal once or twice a month auction schedule.

It's pretty sweet for them because most of the vendor's (including myself) will buy items from the auction and then just stick it in thier(my) booth space.

They do the auction, they charge the consignee 25% commission on the sale of property at auction, the buyer pays 10% buyer premium, if the buyer turns around and puts the item back in the vendor's mall, they get another 10% commission when it sells to the public (not including rental fee for booth space).