Small market, earning millions a month

With the development of street stall economy, various market activities emerge all over the country during holidays, and visiting the market has become a common leisure activity for young people nowadays. This article shares several stall owners of market activities and discusses whether the market economy can continue. Let's take a look.

Three years after the concept of developing the street stall economy was proposed, visiting the market has become a common leisure activity for young people. Every weekend or holiday, various types of market activities emerge across the country.

The Jingzhe Research Institute counted the event information published on social platforms and found that there will be 18 markets in Beijing and 24 markets in Shanghai throughout July. In Chongqing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan and other places, the number of markets that have announced event information this month is all more than 12.

As a commercial activity to boost the economy, the market is one of the most dynamic offline business forms at present. It not only attracts a large number of young people to consume offline, but also becomes a means for a large number of young people to start their own businesses. As a result, a basic industry consisting of stall owners, market organizers, and venue providers has gradually taken shape. And under the phenomenon of the bustling market economy, who has made the first pot of gold from it?

1. Low threshold to achieve the "stall owner dream"

After nearly three years of development and accumulation, the current market has become a flourishing market, with comprehensive markets integrating catering, clothing, and handicrafts, as well as themed markets focusing on categories such as coffee, beer, and figurines, or with nostalgia and retro as keywords. According to the venue of the event, it can generally be divided into shopping mall markets, pedestrian street markets, and scenic spot markets.

Among them, shopping mall markets are usually initiated by the management or operators of the shopping center, usually held in the public area of ​​the shopping mall, and are smaller in scale; pedestrian street markets and scenic area markets, in addition to being initiated by the relevant management units of the business district and scenic area, are often led by local cultural and tourism bureaus and other departments, and the corresponding scale will be larger.

From the perspective of consumer experience, the attraction of a market is often determined by the various stalls at the event site : hand-brewed coffee, cultural and creative products, antique jewelry, handicraft accessories, these personalized products with artistic genes, are the only reason for young people to spend their precious weekends or even weekday evenings to come on time. It is precisely because of the flow of people coming and going in the market and the long queues in front of the stalls that more and more young people begin to join the queue of setting up stalls in the market.

In May this year, after resigning from the company, Pipihuo and her friends started selling armor at a stall in Wuhan with the idea of ​​"finding something to do". Later, she accidentally saw a message on the social platform recruiting market stall owners, so she began to try to set up a stall at the market.

Pipihuo told Jingzhe Research Institute that the managers of shopping malls and pedestrian streets, as organizers of the market, usually find an event company or a mature market brand to cooperate as the organizer, and the organizer will complete a series of tasks such as event planning, venue design, stall owner recruitment and event promotion. For this, the organizer will also pay a certain fee to the organizer.

The organizers of the market usually publish information about stall owner recruitment on media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, and then directly create a group through the platform. Every time there is information about market recruitment, it will be synchronized in the group. In addition, some organizers will search for stall owner bloggers on the platform and invite stall owners through private messages. Therefore, for stall owners who want to set up stalls at the market, it is not difficult to find resources related to market activities.

For stall owners, the only extra cost to participate in the market is the stall fee. And because of the different site conditions and market attributes, the threshold for stall owners to participate in the market is also different.

"Most markets held in open venues are free of charge, because some shopping malls also hope to attract traffic to them by organizing market activities; and in core business districts and pedestrian streets, because they have their own traffic, stall fees are generally around 50 to 100 yuan a day. For more mature market IPs, including electricity costs, sanitation fees, and tables and chairs provided on site, the cost may be up to 200 to 300 yuan; because markets hosted by scenic spots are relatively remote locations, sometimes they give stall owners some subsidies." Pipihuo introduced.

2. The secret code for earning a million per month

As more and more markets are held, some brand-conscious market organizers will put forward certain requirements when recruiting stall owners to ensure the quality of the event. Li Ziyang, the manager of the Wuhan youth market brand "Meibao Zhaoshi", told the Jingzhe Research Institute that the organizers will first restrict the goods or business forms participating in the stalls based on safety and other factors. For example, catering stalls are not allowed to use gas, and game projects are not allowed to have props that pose safety hazards, such as air guns or darts. "For catering stalls that need to be produced on site, we will also require relevant documents such as health certificates or business licenses for individual businesses."

In addition, mature markets will also select products. "For example, common night market catering items such as hand-beaten lemon tea and hand-rubbed ice powder, as well as Yiwu small commodities and Taobao wholesale products, are too replicable. We can recruit more than a dozen stall owners each time, so we will limit the number. On the one hand, this is to avoid serious competition between stall owners, and on the other hand, it is to ensure that the actual experience of the market is more in line with the consumption interests of young people, and truly bring everyone a youth market atmosphere."

According to Li Ziyang, "Bao Mei Zhao Shi" held more than 60 events in 2022, an average of 2 to 3 events per week, of which a considerable number of markets were subsidiary activities planned by the organizers to attract offline business traffic. "We don't make money by doing markets." Li Ziyang revealed that the main members of "Bao Mei Zhao Shi" are all from well-known local event companies, and the market is just a new project developed to serve the offline activities of Party A customers such as shopping malls, real estate and scenic spots.

For example, the Thai evening breeze market recently created by "Meibao Zhaoshi" for Mulan Grassland, a 5A-level scenic spot in Wuhan, aims to enrich the scenic spot's travel experience by creating offline market activities, and to help the scenic spot attract more tourists through the market's supporting online communication, event marketing and other methods.

Real estate developers and fast-moving consumer goods companies also choose to create offline markets to attract traffic to offline activities and enhance the attractiveness of the activities. "Especially for real estate projects, because there is a lack of supporting commercial facilities and low traffic in the surrounding area, they need more traffic to ensure popularity."

Li Ziyang said that in addition to commercial activities, some local governments have also begun to transform local traditional night markets into markets in recent years. In April this year, "Biaomingzhaoshi" received a request from a county near Wuhan to systematically transform a local traditional night market and package it into a local cultural tourism project.

In the first three days of the opening of the street, the total business volume of more than 60 merchants in the entire project exceeded 1.2 million. As a joint operator, "Meibao Zhaoshi" invested about 700,000 yuan in total, and without taking into account the government's matching funds and subsidies, it recovered 400,000 yuan in rental income in just half a year. According to Li Ziyang, the income of a single offline activity is generally 50,000 to 100,000 yuan. Last year, with only 3 people, "Meibao Zhaoshi" had a revenue of 5 to 6 million yuan in more than 100 days. This year, with the increase in the number of employees to 9, the company's turnover has exceeded 7 million yuan.

3. Can the market economy continue?

In recent years, offline businesses have suffered a heavy blow, and the market has become an important means to boost the offline economy due to its unique atmosphere and experience. However, with the full liberalization of offline travel and the explosive development of the market, the sustainability of this business model is also facing challenges.

From the perspective of the business model, the market has realized the platform value by attracting both stall owners and consumers, and has also continued to accumulate brand potential in the ongoing operation of activities. Therefore, domestic market brands that have long been famous, such as Wood Chi Tok, Silver Salt Retro Market, and Fanji Market, can often charge stall fees from brand investors while selling tickets to consumers. But at present, this success may be difficult to replicate.

The main reason is that since the rise of the market, with the comprehensive "flooding" from shopping malls, fast-moving consumer goods brands, real estate developers to scenic spots, the audience's novelty of this format is accelerating. The trend of homogeneity in the industry has also posed a challenge to the operational capabilities of the organizers.

Pipihuo said, "Some markets are close to subway stations and business districts. Although they seem to have a lot of people, they are just people on the go and have no real purchasing power. If the market operators don't select products and don't promote them, the stall owners can only rely entirely on natural traffic, which brings great uncertainty to the stall owners' income. In the future, stall owners may no longer participate in such markets."

Some stall owners have lowered their expectations for the market after experiencing it. Eden, who started planning the "Roadside Burger" project with her husband in March this year, has tried setting up stalls in university towns, business districts and theme markets. She told the Jingzhe Research Institute that for catering projects, participating in the market has a limited effect on increasing revenue.

During the Dragon Boat Festival this year, Eden participated in the trunk market on the Hankou River Beach. During the three days of setting up the stall, the average daily turnover was about 1,000 yuan. "The income in the first two days was good, but on the third day, because it was the last day of the holiday, local customers did not go out and foreign tourists went home, so the income basically plummeted."

In Eden's opinion, the catering industry itself attaches great importance to the conversion of repeat customers, but the market is usually held on weekends or holidays, and many customers come to the market temporarily. It is impossible to accumulate long-term customers in two or three days. Long-term mobile stalls in the market also mean that conversion cannot be generated. "It is difficult for mobile hamburger stall owners without a fixed location to attract customers. Whether it is a university town or a shop somewhere else, it may be more suitable to participate in the market with a promotion mentality after having a fixed store."

In fact, when the market moves from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier cities, changes in the composition of consumer groups and stall owners also pose challenges to the sustainable development of the market. In first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, a considerable number of stall owners in well-known markets are consumer companies with established brand influence, and the purpose of these companies participating in the market is not to increase revenue, but to connect with target audiences and strengthen their brand image through offline activities.

However, in second- and third-tier cities, due to changes in the target consumer groups, mature brands may not necessarily pay for the market, so most of the stall owners participating in the market are young entrepreneurs. Rather than building a brand, they may need a channel that can bring revenue growth, rather than becoming a "light" to help create a market atmosphere. In this context, if the markets in second- and third-tier cities want to establish their own brands and expand their scale, they can only make more efforts in diversified operations, event planning, publicity, etc., to continue to attract local young groups.

Frankly speaking, as a traditional offline business form that has existed for a long time, the core value of the market has shifted from the commercial function of satisfying commodity transactions in the past to the experience-based economy that provides a sense of atmosphere. In the past few years, people have been eager to go outdoors and feel the atmosphere of fireworks because they have temporarily lost their freedom. Now they are also finding the breath of life in the market.

However, in the midst of the atmosphere economy, how can the evolution and growth of offline businesses continue? How can the value of the market be realized in both high-end and low-end markets? This will be a key issue in determining the development prospects of the market economy.

*Pipihuo and Eden are pseudonyms in this article

Author: Early Summer

Source public account: Jingzhe Research Institute (ID: jingzheyanjiusuo), exploring and discovering the new economy.