Markets

This month is a month of markets for me. We have the Fakenham Food Market launching on 14 March, thankfully with sunny weather predicted and some 14 stalls selling delicious food of various kinds. Then the weekend afterwards, Mandy and I will be moving the shop to the Norfolk Showground for the East Anglia Yarn Festival which lasts all weekend. It is called a Festival, but really it is a market, this one happens to be 89 vendors of wonderful yarn, often died by independent dyers, and related products. This is in a very large shed so the weather is of no concern to us. Because of the Festival, I am missing out on the huge H&H Trade Fair in Cologne this year (priorities), which is another kind of market – one of producers of textiles and craft related things selling to retailers. And the news currently is full of talk of the oil and natural gas markets, but perhaps best not think about those.

I got to wondering what it is that people enjoy about a market (which Collins Dictionary defines as a space where goods are bought and sold, usually outdoors). They are a very old form of trading – the Fakenham Thursday Market has had its charter since 1250 and almost certainly existed before then. Shops evolved from market stalls and yet traditional markets have always worked along side them. The Norwich covered market is a good example of this – it is open almost every day of the year and always seems very busy and bustling. My favourite market of all time was the weekly market in Dieppe – my father in law lived there for many years, and we visited regularly and I loved nothing more than pottering around gazing at the amazing food stalls and buying cheese. That was a huge market, taking up most of the town centre. I haven’t been for a long time and hope that it is still as good.

In my previous existence as a coffee shop in Hackney, I was part of the group which brought back the weekly Chatsworth Road Market which had been effectively killed off by Hackney Council in the 1980s. This was some 20 years ago now, and we had such a fight with the Council who wanted us to limit the market to antiques or similar, when in fact the only vendors we could find were mostly food and other related goods. That is where the other half of the definition of market comes in – a market can also be for a particular type of thing that people want to buy – food, yarn, oil, whatever. And, as we pointed out to the Council, a market that offers the goods people want to buy will be successful. The Chatsworth Road Market is still going strong and I am proud to have been part of its re-creation. I can only hope that the Fakenham Food Market goes the same way.

The East Anglia Yarn Festival is a perfect example of a market offering goods that people want to buy that is very niche. Many people have said to me that they are surprised that there are so many vendors there offering mostly the same thing – lovely hand dyed 4ply yarn. Yet every year, thousands of people flock to it, as they flock to similar events all around the country such as Unravel in Farnham, Wonder Wool Wales, or, the biggest of them all, Yarndale in Yorkshire (where, by the way, I will have a small stand this year). The buzz is extraordinary – it amazes me every time, and I think part of it is that the buyers are mostly people passionate about their hobby and enjoying being in a space full of people who feel the same way. It is, in an odd way, quite uplifting. Perhaps there is a crowd psychology around it. Anyway, I have used it as an example of how often traders will do better if there are lots of people selling similar things and why it is not a reason to worry about having too many cake stalls at the Food Market.

Having mulled it over, I think that the lure of a market is the fact that it is nice to mooch, to see lovely things for sale, whether food, or yarn, or plants or model airplanes, to feel part of an event, to mix with other people. It is a sociable thing to do and we are generally quite sociable beings.

So, I hope that I will see you at one or other, or both of the markets this month. I am particularly looking forward to the East Anglia Yarn Festival this year. The shop will be closed from 12 noon on the 20th and all day on the 21st as Mandy and I and most of the stock will be at the Norfolk Showground.