Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is Indie Market Place?

A: Indie Market Place is an independent market encouraging hand-made, Australian products and ideas. It is not strictly a craft market, but a market of ideas. Our goal is to try and recreate the village markets of old, markets of diverse and interesting products and services in a friendly environment. We believe that happy stallholders make happy markets and people are more happy to spend in a happy, friendly environment.

Q: Why do you have so many locations?

A: Actually, we don't want so many locations. What we do is in consultation with our stallholders we scope locations they recommend hoping to find two or three locations which we can finally settle on. However, we have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the Princess.

Q: Why do you have different prices for different locations?

A: We aren't a community market; we don't receive subsidised venues or sponsored marketing. Therefore, our biggest costs are the venue hire costs and marketing costs. Generally at this time marketing costs are largely constant per market, but the cost of hiring the venues and the service we receive can vary wildly and this has to be passed on. Where we receive lower venue costs we have passed these on, which explains the different prices.

Q: We have compared your market stall fees with other markets and we believe your market fees seem higher. What's the deal with that?

A: First and foremost, I ask, is this really the right question? The real question is return on dollars, that is, do I get VALUE for the money invested in Indie Market? Do I make enough at Indie Market Place to not only cover my stall fee but to make it worth my while to be there, compared to another market where I may do better? Think less of the cost and more of the value proposition. If Indie Market does not deliver on the value proposition, then it is only logical to seek an alternative market that does.

Another point on comparing raw dollar stall fees between markets, one must ask, are you comparing apples to apples? It is not valid to compare Indie Market Place to a community market for instance. I have no criticism of community markets and in fact, I recommend them as they add so much to the local community and offer benefits different to Indie Market Place. It needs to be very clear Indie Market Place is NOT a community market; it receives no subsidy from the community nor does it seek subsidy. Whereas a community market exists primarily for the community, Indie Market Place exists for the Stallholder, and seeks to put their interests first, while providing that fun, friendly experience to the community as well.

Indie Market Place is best compared to markets which are more in the nature of handmade or specific genre markets and compared to these, I believe Indie Market Place is more than competitive, especially given the service and support I offer, which I am proud of.

Q: Do you have a Management Committee?

A: No I don't. I am guided by the Stallholders who are very generous with their time, support and advice which I do try to take on board. However this market is set up with my capital, and it is my capital which is at risk so while this situation exists, I naturally have to safeguard this capital which also means I solely take responsibility for management. This may change in the future.

Q: I really hate your application form. Is that going to change to something simpler like a Word Document or something easier?

A: At this stage, no. I base this on the necessity that I am basically a one person operation (although my husband helps me occasionally when he is not busy with his full time job). As the market operates on the thinnest of margins, cost has to be kept as low as possible.

As I am a single operator with no partners or dedicated support people, it is important that I can process your application quickly, error free and accurately without re-typing. Re-typing typically creates a lot of errors, and is the main source of errors with applications for me! So if I can bring your data straight in, I can get this done quickly, minimise administration and get on with promoting the market for you. Keeping costs low by automating this process as much as possible, keeps those stall fees down.

Finally, we do find that where applicants do read carefully the instructions on how to complete the form, and consult the troubleshooting guides, the data I need becomes quite easy to send to me, and this saves us all time and expense. The most common issues are, not running the form in Adobe Acrobat and not carefully filling in all the fields on the form. Where no details are available for a field eg: Rego Number, it is permissible, and recommended, to enter "N/A" in the field. There may however be a problem with Stallholders operating a Mac. Please let us know if you are in this situation and we'll devise an alternative solution.