Keep in mind that winter is windy and summer is rainy. Watch the weather and the radar. Have a tarp to throw over your stuff if a rain cloud comes out of nowhere. Use weights to tie down your table when it’s windy.
I would recommend starting off with a 6 foot table. A small table seems convenient at first, but you are cheating yourself of really experiencing Mallory. People hesitate to approach small tables, they make you look unimportant, and small tables often contain less inventory, which means less sales.
You will need lights, about half your sales will happen after sunset, maybe more.
Rules to know: You are allowed a 8’ by 6’ space
which must include space to allow you to walk to the front of your display when
necessary.
the front three feet of your display must be below 4 feet tall, this keeps you from blocking your neighbors visibility. This rule typically doesn’t apply to umbrellas.
Many people have some variation of the following
display, feel free to change it but at least it gives you a starting point.
The standard display is made of the following
elements (most of which can be found at home depot.) 6 foot table, a table cloth
(Ben Franklin craft store), folding chair, lights and some way to attach them
and a 25 foot extension chord. You should be able to buy everything new for
between $100 and $200. If you want more details, keep reading.
1) 6 foot folding table: Available from
Home Depot, white plastic. $60 or the cardboard table for $40, (cardboard is
lighter, it warps if it gets rained on, and offers no weight to resist wind, but it’s plenty strong enough)
2) Cloth from Ben Franklin crafts to be
used as a table cloth (a good cloth creates a good clean professional appearance
and is definitely worth the money) ($5 - $90) the cloth can be clamped to the
legs of the table. Spring clamps are available at any hardware store $4 each.
3) two or four 8 foot poles from home depot
$2/ea. These give you a spot to clip your lights too. cut them down to 6 feet
and attach them to your table with bungies. They go from the feet of the table
in the back along the back of the table and up into the air. The 4 bungies you
tend to use to do this are used in following way: wrap two around the feet of
the table and the pole and wrap two around the pole and the upper table legs.
Duct tape works too and is cheaper in the beginning to use. Some people use
cross poles on the upright poles in order to give themselves vertical display
surfaces. It is a good idea to use horizontal space if you can. The horizontal
poles can be attached to the vertical poles by bungies, duct tape clamps or
whatever. Bungies cost $3 to $5 the expensive ones last longer. If you do put
inventory up high beware of wind especially in winter.
4) Clamp lights are available from ace
hardware ( I don’t know about home depot), the workmen’s type made from aluminum
don’t look good and tend to break in about a month or two. The more attractive
type designed to clip on to your headboard or bed side table cost less, look
better and last longer. (They also protect you bulbs better) $7 each (buy two)
these lights generally have plastic inserts to keep the light from spreading off
to the side they give off more light if you pull those out.
5) Light bulbs: you are limited to 150
watts of power at Mallory. if you buy the incandescent bulbs you can get a
brighter light without using as much power. For many people, using reveal true
spectrum bulbs is very important to make their product look good. You may want
to use both. The light given off by the various bulbs is very different.
Two bulbs (and maybe a spare) cost $5 to $20 total
6) We ask that you use a 3 prong extension
chord. I suggest you get one that is 25 feet long also if you have multiple
light to plug into the chord, make sure you have a way to do that (for example a
power strip). home depot has extension chords that have 4 sockets and that
retract into the housing when you turn the handle I think they cost $15 . You
may want to buy a power strip because if there are three people using two
sockets and no one has a power strip then it’s difficult. ($7)
folding chair: ?
table $60
cloth $20
spring clamps $16
poles $4
bungies $20
lights $14
bulbs $20
chair $30
extension chord $15
___________
total $189