Let's Get Ready for a Pop-Up Market (Plus Tips, Advice, and Reminders)

Summary

Sami packs up for a Cooper Young-adjacent pop-up market in the middle of a 97° heatwave — swapping sweaters for fall colors and bold patterns, building themed racks (goth, tiny sizes, summer clearance), and sharing her real prep-day chaos before loading the car solo so JR doesn't "help" too much.

• Pick a theme for your market rack before you start pulling stock — it narrows your options and makes curating way faster.
• Price everything in advance if you can, but bring the tag gun as backup for whatever doesn't get done.
• Zip-tie hangers together in groups so they don't shift and tangle in transit.
• Contractor bags are a cheap, reusable way to keep clothes bagged and organized for the car.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. You've got time to waste and I'm here to waste it. Hi. Hello. Uh, get ready for a pop-up market with me. We are doing a Cooper Young adjacent market this weekend, Saturday the 20th, maybe September. And we have a full rack of kids stuff, of blankets, and then also of baby stuff and baby blankets. And also our popup supplies are all here. Additionally upstairs, I have one more rack that I'll be taking with us and another rack that I will be leaving behind. So, I wanted to bring sweaters and coats, but it's going to be like 97°. So, instead, I'm just bringing this rack that has a good mix of like mostly fall colors, uh, bold patterns, suitable for this season, I guess. [clears throat] Oh, I need to grab those little suitcases from over there, too. Right now, I'm about to start bagging everything up. Uh, I spent the week kind of curating what I thought I'd like to bring. And in that process, I was able to get a rack together for a goth show. Well, a section. And then a section together for a tiny sizes show. And then a section together for like summer clearance. And that helped me like get get my [ __ ] in order, I guess. Um, but I've been busy as hell otherwise, too. Um, over here that is a whole stack of my fabrics. I've got them all nice and up there. And then here is a wall of more fabrics. These are all of the things that are listed on eBay. If you want any of them, I will give you a deal. I will give you more than half off. Uh, and then I still have yet to organize um these linens which are Legion, but they will all go nice and neat and beautiful on this shelf. And then um for this market, I'm not going to bring any of my handmade stuff, but it's over there. Soon, this will be sewing station. My downstairs will be clean again. And I can't wait. I really prefer to have chaos consolidated, you know. Um, okay. So, pop-up markets. What do we do? How do we get there? What's the plan? I'm hoping that I can stay on topic enough to at least pull a little tutorial from all this yapping. So, I like to come up with a theme most of the time for markets. It helps me uh decide what to curate. It limits the scope of my options, and I enjoy that. So, this theme was fall and kids, y'all. So, I gathered my favorite kids clothes up. I organized those. I got kid blankets and some toys to kind of keep all that together. And then I knew I wanted a nice fall rack. So, throughout the week, I would just kind of pick things in different sizes and put them on the rack, see if I liked it, if it felt too heavy, too dense, how to because you want to have room, you know? You don't want people to feel like they're at a thrift store and nothing, you know? You got to be able to see things. Have to be able to breathe. [snorts] I like to generally price everything in advance, but I only got about half of my [ __ ] priced. So, I'm going to bring the tags and gun with me tomorrow and just do it while I'm there. Our setup usually takes like 15 minutes. We are so efficient. So, my hope is that I'll have plenty of time to get things priced. Otherwise, I just won't. and that will impact my sales negatively, but I won't die. It'll be okay. If I do die, it'll be because of the heat cuz it's supposed to be like 97° tomorrow. Uh, okay. So, now that I have everything organized how I want to take it, I'm going to put my clothes in these bags and I'm going to do it while they're on the rack. I'm going to tape the bag to it and then I'm going to zip tie hangers together in groups so that the they stay facing the same direction and don't get tangled on each other. Um, not sponsored, but these like contractor's bags are incredible. We reuse them all the time. They hold everything nice and neat together in the car for transport. Chef's kiss. So, I'm going to do that now and then I'll touch base with you again and we'll talk next steps. Now, as you're watching this, you might be noticing the mess that surrounds and consumes my life. Please know that I'm just in the middle of reorganizing everything. I'm moving my sewing area upstairs. I'm moving the vintage clothes all into one place. I'm reorganizing the quilts. So, deal with it. Okay, fine. Here you'll see I am zip tying the hangers like I mentioned. Love these bags. Okay. And now I've got my big kids, my blankies, my little kids, my little blankies, and I got to get all of those packed up. Be right back. Straighten you out. Um, so if you don't mind me pointing out, do you see how good that paos looks? That little vine has grown all the way over to one of the windows and it's it's like miraculous. I'm so proud of it. Okay, everything is packed up. And then I have these tubs. Those include my pricing. Okay. Well, they will include price stickers, a marker, the tagging gun, a tablecloth, accessories for the tent, also a dressing room, our little POS guys, and um just a little of this and that stuff to make the market go easier. I'll probably give you like a full rundown later.

I can't remember offh hand. Okay, now that I have everything I need, it's time to start getting the car packed up. Now, you may be thinking, "Why isn't your husband helping you with this?" And I'll tell you, because he loves to help with this, and I'm a [ __ ] [ __ ] I can just do it better and fast for myself. So, I waited for him to leave, and now I'm going to try and get it done before he gets back so that um [laughter] so that I can be like, "Well, maybe I was just so efficient and not I would just fight with you about where we should put things." you're if you're married, you get it. Some things are just, you know, he's so good. He's so helpful. He would do it all himself. I'm not going to let him. I'm going to do it myself and I'm going to probably save space in the car. Girls don't sweat, they glisten or whatever. Um, everything's packed. Just showing off how lightly I did it. Front seat totally open. Back seat. Probably should have thought twice before opening.

We got everything all loaded up and there's plenty of room back here for the tent and stuff. [snorts] Assuming we have a tent that size, we should have a 10x10 tent. I also grabbed a bunch of extra markers and paper because I have these little signs that attach to the racks and I like to label them with what deals are there or like what collection is and I'll just hand write those tomorrow. Tag gun, card reader, even though I really just use my phone mostly. Should be all set. We could be able to pull up right now just the way we are and be good to go. [ __ ] yeah. All right, I'll be back probably. Hi. Hello. Good morning. My sweetheart and I are on our way to the market. Uh, hi. Hello. We are live at the market and it is the slowest one I've ever done. We're outside the main area and so I think people are just not walking this way. It's also like I don't know 97° outside. We're so slow. But, uh, having fun seeing some friends I haven't seen in a while, meeting some new friends. Um, some people are surprised to learn that I'm from Memphis and they've seen me on the internet and that's so crazy. Uh, okay. Um, also this event is at this place called Stomping Grounds and it's kind of amazing. They have great murals, too. You should definitely come check it out. Okay. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. I got no footage today. I didn't film setup. I didn't film literally anything. I think maybe there's one clip that I'll be able to add in. Way to go. Way to be. I'm a great content creator. Uh I'm a little bit sunburned right now, but by tomorrow it'll all be a tan. It was It was a

It was a lovely day. It was 100° outside. It was very hot. Um, and the market was outdoors. We were slightly off the like main path, so we didn't get as busy, but the festival overall was not nearly as busy as it usually is. Uh, which was a little bit of a bummer cuz this is usually like our most profitable market of the year. But you know what? I don't really give a [ __ ] because I got to see a bunch of friends I hadn't seen in a while. I saw my friend Mikey. J.R.'s been running into him lately, but I haven't seen this dude in like 20 years. and I got to see his beautiful wife and then like three separate people who knew me from the internet which is crazy. Um and just you know old friends Danny a girl who used to volunteer with me that works in cat rescue just so that part is always wonderful. Um load in and out was quick. We are super efficient with it. You saw how I loaded the car yesterday. So getting things out of the car. I literally build one rack, put everything on it, wheel it over, set up the tent, set up the other racks, lay it all out. It's um I didn't have anything priced in advance really, so I had to do that when I got there, but I just went through with the tag gun, tagged everything, and then went back through with the marker and hand wrote prices and then measured things when I had time. I think we sold maybe 20, 30 things today. But it was great that it was slow because it gave me time to get photos of the kids stuff. So now I can load the kids show for whatnot. I'm gonna do that next. Um, yeah. Not a bad day. I love you. Goodbye.

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