Dubai: A flea market is a great way to unwind over the weekend. However, the organisation that goes into setting up a market isn't all play.
Alessia Jakouch, organiser of the Second Hand Bazaar market in Uptown Mirdif, describes the route she took in setting up the market.
"I had to go to the Economic Department for a normal trade licence, which has to be renewed every year," she said.
"For each event we need permission from the Economic Department and have to pay a certain amount," she added.
"While I don't have to pay for the venue, I still have to pay a bit extra for electricity usage, security and [the] hiring of tables and chairs."
Roslynne Bourguignon, founder of the JBR Covent Garden Market, said the main difficulty was trying to get people to understand the concept.
"When I started up the original Covent Garden Market in 2005, people were scratching their heads. It was a new concept and they didn't really know what to give us in terms of how to trade," she said.
As a new concept in the region, Beese said she had found it hard to convince the municipality.
"[It was difficult] when I started to explain what I wanted to do because the municipality didn't really understand the concept of using second hand items," she said.
While Beese initially used flyers in Spinneys and a website to market her market, Miriam Walsh and Paul Townsend used social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook along with adverts in newspapers to get their event out.
Extra customers
"While we do a lot of marketing through advertisements, we also encourage stall-holders to do their own promotion. If each stall-holder can bring in ten people through the door that's a lot of extra customers," Townsend said.
He added that by promoting stall-holders, they were also able to indirectly promote the event.
"If we have a stall-holder who has particularly interesting products, we get media coverage for them," Townsend said.
"It's a good local story, the publicity is good for us and it's good for them. The whole Arte Group wins. We learn from an advertising point of view what works and what doesn't," he added.
