Craft markets in Turin: how to choose the ones worth your day

When you work out what a market costs you, you usually stop at the stall fee. But it also takes the day of preparation, the loading and unloading, the hours on your feet from opening to closing, and all the production you don't do while you're there. If you do the maths on the fee alone, almost every market looks worth it. If you do it on your time, most of them aren't. The markets that are worth the day can be spotted in advance, though, and it only takes a few questions, all asked before you pay.

In Turin, markets are not all the same thing. There's the one in a courtyard, the one that exists inside a bigger festival, the neighbourhood one run by an association, the one that takes over a whole square for a few days. The crowd, the hours when people actually walk through, the level of selection and how hard the organiser really works to bring people in all change. What follows is how to read a market before you pay the fee, and how to use it not just to sell pieces but to fill your workshop dates.

What you are actually paying for

A stall fee is rent on a space for a number of hours. It isn't a payment to you and it isn't a promise of takings, and don't assume it's refundable: ask. What it includes varies a lot: at some markets you get a table, a chair and a gazebo, at others you bring everything yourself; in some places electricity is included, elsewhere you pay for it separately or it simply isn't there. What pushes the fee up or down is the length of the event, the area, whether the space is covered, whether there's a selection at the door, and how much the organiser spends on promotion. Two markets in the same city can ask you very different amounts for entirely legitimate reasons. The point isn't which one costs less, but which one puts you in front of the right people.

What to ask before you pay the fee

• How many exhibitors are there in total, and how many do what I do. Another ceramics stall isn't a problem; a lot of ceramics stalls in a small space is.
• Is there a selection, or does anyone who pays get in. Without a selection, resellers can get in too, and the crowd arrives with price expectations that aren't yours.
• How do you bring the crowd in. You don't need a number, you need to know what they actually do: a well-run social page, posters in the area, a newsletter, a relationship with the neighbourhood, a slot inside a bigger event.
• What hours do people really walk through. Knowing when the wave arrives tells you when you need to be sharp at the stall, and when you can afford to eat.
• What exactly the fee includes: table, chair, gazebo, lighting, electricity. And if there is electricity, how many watts per stall.
• Where do I load and unload, at what time, and where do I leave the car afterwards. In the centre or in a square closed to traffic, this is the item that ruins your morning.
• What happens if it rains: does it go ahead, get postponed, get refunded.
• Can I talk to two exhibitors from the last edition. This is the question that gives you more information than all the others put together.

If an organiser can't tell you who exhibited last time, the problem isn't the answer: it's that nobody has ever asked.

Working out whether the crowd is yours

Look at photos from previous editions, but don't look at the stalls: look at the people. How old they are, whether their bags are full or their hands are in their pockets, whether there are pushchairs. Then look at what's being sold besides craft: where there's a lot of street food, people eat and keep walking; where there's vintage and records, they stay longer and browse. Finally check the average price range of the stalls. If you're well above it, you'll spend the day explaining why you cost what you cost, and explaining is more tiring than selling.

Then there's geography. The area changes who walks past and why, even within the same city. An evening market on a street full of bars catches people who are already out for something else. A neighbourhood one, in a residential area, catches people who live there and have time to stop. One attached to a food market catches people who came out to do the shopping. None of these situations is the wrong one: they're different audiences, and the question to ask is always the same, which of them buys what you make. If you don't know, ask the organiser who stopped at the stalls last time, and at what hour.

What to bring and what to leave at home

• An entry price point, a mid one, and a few high pieces. Without the entry point you stop nobody; without the high pieces you never raise the average sale.
• A price on everything, written and readable. Someone who has to ask the price often doesn't ask and walks off.
• Height. Lift your pieces off the tabletop with crates or shelves: a flat stall reads as a clearance stall.
• Something in progress. Working at the stall stops people better than any sign, and it opens the right conversation.
• A charged card reader and cash for change. In busy squares the signal can drop exactly when the crowd is at its biggest.
• The toolbox: tape, scissors, string, cable ties, a power bank, a cover sheet. And something to eat, because often you can't leave the stall.
• Leave at home the full catalogue, the fragile pieces you can't remake, and the "price on request".

From the stall to the booking

At a market people buy the object, but the question they ask most often isn't about the object: it's about the Maker behind the stall. About you. How long does it take you to make? Did you make it yourself? And then the third one: can you learn to do this? That third question comes from someone who'd like to try, and at most stalls it gets a polite, vague answer. Prepare a single sentence and always say it the same way: what you do in the workshop, how long it lasts, what you take home. You don't have to sell it, it just has to come out without hesitation, because in a crowd you have very little time.

Then it has to be bookable right there, on the spot. A QR code on the stall that leads to the workshop page with dates already online works; "follow me and I'll announce the dates" almost never converts. It also helps to be able to say that the place is held with a deposit online and the balance is paid at the studio on the day: nobody decides on a full price with a coffee in their hand. If they ask whether it can be done as a group, for a birthday or a group of colleagues, you have two ready answers: private events on an agreed date, and the gift card, which is valid for twelve months and covers the whole workshop. In December, at the stall, that's the answer to "I need a gift and I don't know what to get".

Do the maths the same evening

That same evening, before you forget, write down five numbers: stall fee, transport and parking, your hours and the hours of whoever helped you, gross takings, contacts collected. Thirty days later, add one more: how many bookings came out of it. That sixth number is what decides whether you go back. A market that empties your stall of low-margin pieces and leaves nothing behind is worth less than one that sells little but brings three people into your studio, because those three come back and talk. If you still don't know how much a date has to bring in to be worth running, start from how to build the right price for a workshop and work backwards.