Careful How You Serve
Wheelchair Customers – one of our traders was serving a wheelchair bound customer at a top
end stall. After a short deliberation the customer decided on his purchase.
Our
trader placed the purchased item in a carry bag, took the customers $50 note, quickly
placed the carry bag on the customers lap, and turned back to his counter to
get some change. He was suddenly aware of a commotion and turned to see the
wheelchair doing rapid circles in front of his stall.
The
trader had inadvertently placed the carry bag handles over the chair’s joystick
and activated the mechanism so that the chair was doing rapid “doughnuts”. After
a little bit of panicking, a quick response from the trader, and some profuse
apologies the situation returned to normal. Those wheelchair joysticks can be
super sensitive.
Little Things That Count – one of our traders is a
new casual and he has been battling to achieve the results he wants from market
sales. He has a decorator product that ticks many of the boxes for new craft or
designer products. One of our Trader representatives visited this trader on
Saturday to be told that he had experienced a bumper sales day at last. The
reason? – his stall had been included in the market’s guided tour for that day
and that made all the difference to his sales. More of the same please.
Facebook Videos – Head of Promotions &
Communication, Mark Scott has teamed up with some traders to experiment with
facebook video promotion. We posted recently about Bruce Pham’s video on sock
manufacturing which has now reached over 7000 views and climbing. Similar promotions have been done for Andy’s
Victoria Market Gifts, Ivano’s caricatures and Annettes flower soaps. The high
mark has been set by a Night Market video showing deep fried Haloumi chips with
134,000 views and this method of promotion shows great potential.
New Traders – a big welcome to Chelsea
De Main from Eye Am Hair with her hairdressing caravan up in C Shed. Chelsea is
on a trading trial leading up to Christmas and she offers a whole range of
hairdressing services. She even made one of our traders look presentable so pop
in if you need a haircut, hair
colours, wash and blow-drying, braiding, hair wraps, beard grooming and styling.
And
a big welcome to the operators of Jen’s Craft who created quite an impact on
the corner of K Shed and the W Walkway on Saturday.
What About A Clearance
Stall – over
the years markets have been famous for clearing a whole range of goods from
distressed sales, auctions, and other outlets that offer bulk purchases at the
right price. In the good old days a trader might sell aluminium saucepans one
week and silk umbrellas the next.
We
now categorise our traders and we each have an approved list of goods we can
sell which, unless you are lucky, prohibits the sale of clearance items. Categorising
is good because it protects legitimate traders from unfair competition. But one
trader has suggested that there could be a category that allows the sale of various
clearance items and enhances the reputation of a market for great bargains. That
might be OK as long as it isn’t your product that is being cleared. What do you
think?
Dangerous Headphone Use – a number of our traders
and stall staff are often seen wearing headphones for extended periods. The
World Health
Organisation has issued a warning that music volume should be kept
at around 60 percent and they should be worn for no more than one hour per day.
Additionally they suggest you use the more expensive noise-cancelling
headphones so you are not inclined to use high volumes to block out background
noise. There is certainly plenty of background noise during set up and pack
down times at QVM.
