VENDOR PREP SCHOOL

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As vendors of Cleveland Flea, you’re all going to be enrolled in Vendor Prep School- a coaching program for all the prep that you SHOULD be doing leading up to event day. It’ll be broken down weekly, based on your type of business and based on what is required of you by us, the City of Cleveland, and any other regulatory boards like food service or fire department.

It’s essentially like having a temporary Business Manager for when you need them- reminding you to do all the stuff that, if not done, can easily contribute to you:

  • getting kicked out of the market day

  • losing your opportunity to sell

  • putting yourself in a state of panic

  • causing serious damage to your vendor neighbors or shoppers

  • not being able to focus on selling

  • getting yourself kicked out of Cleveland Flea permanently

  • getting on the bad side of all the regulatory organizations (food safety, fire, taxes, etc)

Being a small business owner can be really cool. But without adequate preparation it can easily turn into a nightmare. And we’re not there on-site to solve problems you could have easily solved early. No reputable market can afford to spend all their time attending only to the concerns of it’s business-owner community during an event. There are thousands of other people there- your shoppers. And it’s our responsibility to keep them safe. Also, we have things we want to sell and lives we want to live.

And that requires your participation and partnership.

To get your shit together.

To get over yourself.

To switch from confusion to confidence.

We KNOW it’s hard. We’re also a small business, friends.

That’s why we’re creating this for you. We want you to have the BEST MARKET DAY EVER. Truly. And so we’re going to prod you to take care of the ‘boring but necessary’ stuff in the right time frame.

This stuff is YOUR responsibility, so don’t confuse it with being OUR responsibility.

Our responsibility is to kick you out if you don’t comply- not solve it all for you if you willingly show up unprepared.

Period.