My First Portland Market!
Huzzah! Look, mah! My first time selling in-person in Portland!
It was ultra special and meaningful for me to start boothing at my own neighborhood’s annual summer fair — the Foster Summer Soirée!
This chapter for me is about focusing on the places + circles I can influence. Coming from Oakland, I believe strongly in grassroots efforts — putting in energy and love to my direct neighborhood and region. When it’s clear the govt isn’t there to support us, we must rely on each other to create the world we want.
For me, this means:
I surveyed my followers about which pieces spoke most to them. I listened. And made them into products.
My art can be a reprieve from the bad shit
I’m making my creations more accessible ($5 cards, $20 prints) to more people.
My work is printed in my local community with Gango Custom Printing — woman-founded, woman-owned, family run with folks who share my values. You purchasing my work helps support Gango and Portland’s economy.
My packaging is sourced from EcoEnclose — WOC, sustainability and circle economy focused.
I share my outcomes and learnings so other creatives might do the same for themselves too.
Goals + Project Success Metrics:
Goal Recap from last quarter’s First Print Run post:
2025 Q2 (April - June): set up the Foundation for my shop and “publishing” works for sale.
2025 Q3 (July - September): expand the Foundation, add a few more offerings, diversify my channels.
Create a workflow to sell framed originals
Speak to x1-2 local retailers to sell my cards
Sell at x1 in-person market
Market testing of +2 genres of cards to see how they do
Consider posting best selling designs on Etsy for online mass marketability
Let’s goooooo!! I wanted to take this opportunity to test out a few designs and see what speaks to strangers. Here are the concrete goals:
Primary:
✅ Break even for $50 booth fee
Expand to strangers market
Secondary: Validation of market demand for physical products
✅ Grow email list
✅ Test product mix with new audience
✅ Social media content creation
Long-term: Foundation for expanded product line and sustainable creative business
✅ Validate in-person market model for scaling
✅ Build relationships for retail opportunities
✅ Generate revenue with my art!
✅ Document processes for future markets
Results & Numbers:
Number of Orders: 19
Product Revenue: $250.00
Total COGs: $88.80
Gross Profit: $161.20
NET PROFIT: $129.18
NET PROFIT MARGIN: 52%
Average Order Value: $13.16
Product by Popularity
Learnings and Insight:
Customers:
63% of sales were new customers and people who literally walked up to my booth to peruse. Hot dang!
This also speaks to the dedication and love of my existing network of friends who came out to not only support me but to buy my work too!? Thank you, friends!!
Products:
Internally, I created three categories for my card designs:
Confident sellers:
Nature-inspired work
“Keep Portland Weird” experiments:
Nicolas Cage “Vampire’s Kiss” meme portrait
A hot dog
Test experiments:
My more vague, vibey star and astrology pieces: Taurus North Node and Strawberry Moon.
Abstract expressive painting, Day 100
My nature-inspired works sells really well in Portland. Go figure!
Many folks bought x1 card (paying in cash)
Less people in this audience were inclined to Buy 4 Get 1 Free. I will likely try adjusting this a bit for lower quantity.
Nicolas Cage was a big hit — attention grabber, got a lot of chuckles, a lot of great conversations! But not everyone wanted to purchase the card or print. Hmmmmmmmm.
I was surprised that people were drawn to the Day 100 design! That one was an art therapy piece where I just felt my way through the painting. And people were keen on it. Fascinating!
Some folks wanted to buy the framed prints already matted and installed. Hmmmm. I framed them for display-only, but now I’ll consider having a few framed options perhaps. (The creative director in me admittedly gets anxiety — what if it doesn’t match their house!?)
Backend Operations:
Squarespace POS versus Square POS
Because I have my e-commerce shop hosted on Squarespace and they have Square reader integration, I decided to do my checkouts within the Squarespace app.
I figured it would keep all my analytics in the same place; newsletter signups would be easy and kept in the same database. (And would be more secure for subscriber security since their emails wouldn’t be split between both Square and Squarespace.)
From purchasing, customers would get a customized email with receipt from me that would be automatically enabled thru Squarespace’s Email Campaign system. Lovely. I do love that!
BUT! Three major issues that came up:
1) Squarespace’s POS couldn’t / didn’t automatically attribute Buy 4 Cards Get 1 Free discounting! Even after I tried to set it up on the Squarespace “Discounts” section, I noticed that discount couldn’t be accessed or applied when I was selling “Live” at the market! Additionally, I couldn’t even easily select my Friends & Fams % discount thru their POS!
2) Yoooooooo for whatever reason, the Squarespace app wasn’t maintaining a stable / consistent bluetooth signal with the Square tap reader. So, eventually I just disabled the bluetooth for tap and just used the basic card swiper via microphone jack connection. NOT the kind of tech savviness I prefer!
3) Squarespace Shop doesn’t have a “vacation mode” similar to how Etsy has. I decided to have my inventory count be managed via the Squarespace product inventory. So, this meant when I was checking things out thru the POS, I was seeing things from my e-commerce shop, my wholesale shop, and the products I was selling in-person — and no way to show JUST the in-person market products.
As a solution, I put a placeholder on my shop and wholesale and hid all those items. Not what I want but worked while I’m still small potatoes right now.
These contributed to a pretty sloggy, antiquated way of checking out! Not what I want for someone who wants users’ journeys to run smoothly and with ease — especially my OWN! lol
So, I’ll be trying checkout directly from Square’s POS app instead next time.
Additionally, I’ve already started researching how to add barcodes to the back of my cards and prints so I can easily and quickly scan at check out, instead of searching for the art pieces manually in the POS.
Let’s talk booth design + immersive design:
This warrants its own section lol
At first, I was worrying SO much by how much I was spending more than the average person for my booth setup. I know most people just buy a popup 10x10 tent, get a plastic folding table, and buy their standard display stands. But that’s really boring to me. Creating immersive spaces is one of my loves — it’s like mini versions of themed entertainment design. And there’s a huge opportunity to play with sensory and subtle social cues to illicit an emotion, feeling, vibe, experience.
🍋 Roadside Fruit Stand Theme
I’ve been thinking of my Shop as a little garden where I’ve been growing my creativity and I’m selling my harvests. It’s casual. It’s cute. It’s accessible. It’s connected to nature. It speaks to “village mentality” that is very important to me.
i brought this upon myself. lol
The structure:
It took some trial + error to figure out the scaffolding for my canopy. I ended up getting:
Table rod stand with clamps (a la wedding decor)
(Note: I get like $0.20 from these above Amazon affiliate links roflol)
This worked well with the first trial run! I chose rods and stands that seemed quite sturdy and I chose a cloth that was lightweight.
Canopy woes:
Then I painted the drop cloth with primer…
… and then with exterior paint………
and it got soooo heavvvyyy!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭
By the time I finished painting it, I only had another day to prep my setup. I had to work with what I had on hand - and whatever I could order on Amazon prime overnight. It took me a while to figure out I could combine these 360 rotatable brackets with these modular length tent poles to create additional scaffolding, crossbar supports for my canopy.
My goal was to create something that:
reads as roadside or farmers market produce stand
is modular in depth for varying future boothing options
can be modular in width for wider or shorter setups
lightweight and easy to pack so I can do it on my own - easily and quickly
And I didn’t want to use PVC.
(I know. A popup tent would really fit the bill. LOLOL)
Great R&D experimenting! But much to improve upon…
The scaffolding + now much heavier canvas cloth are definitely STURDY but not easy to wrestle or put up on my own. I do love that I put my braincells together to create something different than just a popup tent. I wanted my space to look and feel different, a bit more thought out and intentional. And it worked! I got lots of compliments on the design of my booth! But…. it still won’t work for me in the long run.
For the next phase, I’m going to look into:
Can I make my own thin, wood framing?
Shall I get fabric to make the “breezy” canopy design style by sewing thinner canopy materials myself?
How do I want to handle this for indoor / winter markets?
I think in the past, I would have given up on my vision/idea of how to design my booth. I think I would have surrendered to the status quo and just do what others do moving forward. (Part of me still thinks about this option too.)
But… I know my heart wants to make the spatial experience different, less cookie cutter, more me and how I authentically create.
Also… did people see my booth and think it’s too designed and did it turn people away from my
Hey, thanks for reading my long ass post!
Honestly, if you made it this far - wow, hello fellow nerd! LOL 🤓
Please use the code SUMMER15 to get 15% off cards and prints in my Shop! My inventory from the Foster Soiree has flowed over to the shop for all of those who couldn’t make it. Thank you for your support!
