This post was added to our discussion on grouping stalls but it covers wider issues and we felt it deserved its own post.
28/04/2012 23:08:27 "I'm a little late to add my piece to this, but here goes......
Just some ideas that l feel, we the fellow General Merchandise stall holders, along with the Meat, Fish, Dairy and Fruit & Veggies need to think about to help improve our market. I am happy to get both positive and negative feedback for these comments:
1) Parking at the market:
- As we have very limited parking to begin within, at the actual market, l feel that all STALL HOLDERS, Staff, Cleaners, QVM Management Staff, Box Hire, Table Hire employees, and discount City Employee rates, should not park in the main carpark, as this reduces the number of available spots for customers to park.
2) Shuttle Bus Service:
- A shuttle bus should be arranged to run on Saturdays and Sundays with the cost shared between the QVM and the multi story car parks around the market. This could run every 20 mins, and ferry customers between the market and these car parks, reducing the parking issues.
3) Trading Hours :
This pains me to put in words, but l do believe that we need to address our hours. I see so many potential customers arriving at the market, after our closing times, and be disappointed that we are closed. (I know people will say they should have arrived when we were open). I think we need to look at chugging the time we open in the morning, as l have seen a dramatic drop in morning customers, and now find that customers are not arriving until around 11am each day. As most of your major markets throughout the world are either evening or night markets, perhaps we need to investigate the possibility of changing our hours. Im not saying to a night market, timeframe, but perhaps, something like 11am till 7pm, or 12pm till 8pm, or 10am till 6pm. These are just suggestions for our times.
4) General Merchandise:
- We do need to take a good look at the available merchandise within the market. We do have a lot of repetition, and this is due to a number of stall holders now holding multiple licences, resulting in their products being repeated, along with the other stall holds who were already selling these items.
I guess what l am saying is we do need tighter controls on what product lines already on sale within the market, and on what products are let in to the market going forward. We need to also look at the varieties we are supplying.
5) Customers:
- This is the most important item, we need to find a way to attract the public back to our Market. Gone are some of these things from the market:
The rides in Queen St,
The free parking around the market,
Variety of merchandise, brands, styles, qualities
6) Advertising:
Lets look at doing something in this area
Radio, TV, Newspapers are all good, but lets try to expand on that.
Why not BUSES, TRAMS, TAXIS, TRAINS, these are seen by thousands of people everyday. Its a great way to get your brand name out there, and they are mobile, they do not rely on people listening to that radio channel at that time of day. People actually watching a TV ad, instead of changing channels, or just flicking past the section that we are advertised in the paper.
The new bus tours are a great idea, and will generate more tourist trade, but lets try to tap into the inner city living crowd (something the Suzuki Night Market has done) and get them to the market. The trams, and buses around the city would generate more awareness to those living and working right around the corner from us.