2012 Regular Season Overview for Potential Vendors

The 2012 Market Day regular season events run the first Saturday of the month, May through October.

Market Day Poster

If you want to print a poster and promote Market Day, feel free! Just click the image and download.

Event Overview

Market Day is a monthly market for art, vintage, homemade, and handmade goods. We select makers and curators who have exciting, well-made goods.

Last year we hosted over 10,000 shoppers and 75 unique vendors over seven events.

There are no commissions – you keep whatever you make!

The event is open to the public from 9am-2pm. Vendors may arrive as early as 7 AM and must have their booths cleared by 3 PM.

Booths

55 booths are open each month.

Regular season booths will cost approximately $50 each.

Refunds are not available for Market Day except under extenuating circumstances. Please get in touch if you have an unexpected situation to deal with. (Note! Be very careful when purchasing booths through TicketLeap -- if you accidentally buy two booths for one month, we will refund your $48, but not the fees you paid.)

Booths are be roughly five feet by six feet. Vendors must provide their own set-up. You quite literally get a five foot by six foot area taped off on the floor. This is a fast, simple, low-key show. You'll be able to pull up very near the event location and bring in your equipment through double-wide automatic doors. Nice, right?

Booth spaces will be assigned by event organizers. You will have an opportunity to indicate your preferred booth locations during registration for a particular event.

Vendors who need to make use of lighting and electricity must supply their own lights, cables and cords. Access to electricity is not guaranteed, however, upon registration, vendors will have an opportunity to indicate their preferred booth locations. Register as early as possible to increase the chance of getting your preferred spot.

We STRONGLY encourage you to think VERTICAL and leave the chairs at home. Build a tall, fun, engaging display, get up from behind the table, and talk to people, dang it! We like booths that feel like a fun nook at a cool book store and less like a team of Girl Scouts selling cookies from behind a folding table.

Location

Market Day's fourth season will take place in the lobby of the Kirkwood Hotel and the Des Moines Social Club theater at 400 Walnut Street in downtown Des Moines. This is the same location as 2011's events.

What We're Looking For

Each booth is to contain original, handmade projects, art or vintage items.

This is an application-based event, and not all applicants are accepted. Not being accepted to vend at Market Day is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of your work — our event has a very unique vibe that leans towards fun, hip, and indie-minded stuff.

We take our tagline seriously: Arts. Crafts. Not arts and crafts. If you're a fine artist or an indie maker, you'll probably be a great fit at Market Day.

We generally do not accept "country craft". Not trying to knock on it, just not our thing. If your work contains a lot of wicker or flowers or rustic scenes painted on saw blades or cute sayings about the dinner table on framed embroidery, we're probably not interested.

Items which are not acceptable: mass produced products (except for SWEET vintage finds), imported goods such as clothing, jewelry, trinkets, crafts, and home décor. If you made it from a kit or got it produced at a factory, we're probably not interested.

Other Policies

Vendors are responsible for acquiring any type of special sales license, should their goods require it: food, alcohol, etc.

Organizers reserve the right to ask vendors to remove questionable items (e.g. items that are overly commercial or too risqué) from booths. We're more likely to be tough on commercial goods. It takes a lot to be too risqué for us.

Collecting and remittance of sales tax is required. Vendors who need them will be provided with temporary sales tax permits. If you need further help, please contact the Iowa Department of Revenue & Finance: - Opal Current (515) 242-0691 [Opal.current@idrf.state.ia.us]

Vendors are responsible for the transportation, set up, sales and delivery of their own goods.

Applying

You've read everything above? All of it? Yes? Good!