by Kirby Lindsay Laney, posted 25 August 2015
In late summer 1990, Marcia Holiday and Jon Hegeman were at work on a neuro-linguistic programming project. “We were putting together classes on behavioral training,” she recently recalled, “but that fell to the wayside when the [Fremont Sunday] Market got started.”
When Hegeman launched one of his latest ideas, Holiday came along to help out and, 25 years later, she still does. Holiday works, as Comptroller and doing vendor relations, for the Fremont Sunday Market – as well as the Ballard Farmers Market, Madrona Farmers Market, and Wallingford Farmers Market. Over two-and-a-half decades, Holiday has seen businesses outgrow the Market, and say their last hurrah there. She’s seen some leave and then return. She’s also seen a few businesses transition from parents to children, as the second generation runs them now.
“Attendance is up,” Holiday estimates about the weekly Market, yet “as with everything, we have to keep up with it. We love being a walking place, and visiting place.” Still, Holiday wants Market visitors to be aware, “if you don’t support your local artist, your local craftsperson, your local vendor, they won’t be there any longer, and you’ll have to buy what the big box store wants to sell you.”
‘A Kernel Of All That Fremont Is’
“I was there when the idea first got started,” Holiday explained about 1990, “I’ve been sort of a peripheral mover on all this. It’s like family.” Remembering back to those first weeks, Holiday admitted to some surprise at how popular the Market was from the first. People really responded to the eclectic shopping experience it offered, and this new idea.
The Fremont Sunday Market started without a template and without an equal in this region, leading the way for the public markets that have sprung up around town. While Holiday, and a small staff, managed the Market, “Jon [Hegeman] had to do all the things we didn’t know we had to do,” she recalled, including advocating with the City (creating regulations where none existed,) finding insurance and doing publicity.
“When we started the Market,” Holiday recalled, “Fremont was dead. I really think the Market made the Fremont revolution happen. The Market is such a perfect reflection of Fremont. It is a kernel of all that Fremont is, in one day!”
Today vendors and the Market staff use the internet, and social media, to let people know what they have and where they are – but nothing like that existed back when the Fremont Market began. “The internet wasn’t available,” Holiday recalled, “there was no Facebook, no Like-ing.”
The Market began in September, and a few weeks later, “it got cold and rainy.” Still, the vendors stayed, until Christmas and then, “we closed, usually, at the first snow, until Easter,” Holiday explained. After three years though, they decided to stay open year ‘round – as they do now. “It was easier,” Holiday said, “no one has to wonder if we’re open.”
Even now, the Fremont Sunday Market will stay open through the winter. “We don’t close,” Holiday said, “even on snow days, people will still show up. Once or twice the weather has been so dangerous,” with lightening or fierce winds, that they closed early. Yet Holiday thinks the location has made weather less of an issue. “Fremont dodges a lot of what is predicted,” she said. Elsewhere it may be raining, or see snow on the ground, while Fremont remains fair and dry.
Not Your Same Old Cookie Cutter
The Fremont Sunday Market developed, according to Holiday, as a place for people to launch their own business. “It takes time to make things, to talk to customers,” Holiday observed, “and there are added, unknown, unexpected costs to renting a brick-and-mortar that take away from any profits.” The Markets provides a place where potential entrepreneurs can build an audience, try out a product and/or drive traffic to their on-line business.
The Market also allows for those who might want to sell small. Holiday gave the example of Kaleidoscope Candles, and owner Jim Higgins who has been vending at the Market for nearly 19 years. He did leave early, and in great haste, one Sunday when word reached him that his wife had gone into labor with their first child. Since then, Higgins has spent years as a stay-at-home dad, home schooling his kids, and making candles that he can sell each week at the Market. And with his kids now grown, Higgins plans to work with the Market staff to expand his business soon.
“You go in to a mall today,” Holiday observed, “and there are 900 clothing stores that all look the same, selling cookie-cutter products. When I go to the Market, I never know what I’m going to see. It’s an infinite number of opportunities, even the imports bring in items you won’t see elsewhere. It’s the world’s best mall!”
‘Keep It In Front Of People’
At 25 years young, the Market keeps going, according to Holiday, by the hard work of vendors and staff. “We keep it in front of people,” she explained, as everyone uses Facebook, Twitter, and other means, to let people know about the opportunities, “as with everything, we have to keep up with it. Our customer is the vendor, but we have to keep customers in front of them.”
“The bottom line is foot traffic,” Holiday said. For vendors, getting foot traffic is the draw, but Holiday knows they don’t just care about passers-by. “Going to the Market is one thing,” she requested visitors remember, “but those people, the vendors, aren’t there just for your entertainment. They are there to make money.”
Twenty-five years of the Fremont Sunday Market is a milestone worth celebrating (look for chances coming this fall) but the future of the Market remains fully with its customers. Make a plan this Sunday to explore our neighborhood marketplace, and to buy a thing or two to support of Fremont’s original, and still unique, mall.
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©2015 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.