We’re rolling out new trainings (with Vern!) — and we’ve moved them!
They’re now in your Documents tab — scroll down to learn about setting up a market, setting up accounting, and more. Every week we’re adding more!
Archives for category: Uncategorized
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 58 trips to carry that many people.
Does your website have a link to your Complete Vendor List? You know, the one that lists your approved vendors in alphabetical order, and updates automatically with the information they provide to you?
You should talk to me if you don’t yet have one. They are great — and they will free up some of your maintenance hours on your website, since the alternative is a bit more archaic — you’d have to go in and manually update your vendors as you approve them, add their company description, and change the order every time you approve a vendor in the middle of the alphabet!
But what if your customers need to contact one of your vendors after your last market day? If it’s past your last market day, then your vendor list is blank. There are two ways to fix this. One is to add a day to each of your market — maybe the last day in January — in market set up. The other is to talk to me and get the code for the off-season. This will have to be updated next year, though, so keep that in mind!
Today, it’s November. Your regular season has ended. You might be organizing a holiday market, but for the most part, you’re done. You look around your office space — at home or at work — and you see all the paper. 2011 was a big year — look at all that documentation! Paper applications, licenses, and attendance rosters — 2011 could fill an entire file cabinet.
You’ve been hearing about managemymarket for a few years now. Some of the markets you admire use it. And now you have just a tiny bit of down time, before registration opens again for 2012. But you’re not ready to make a commitment. After all, your market just ended!
What you’d really like is to get in, and play with managemymarket – really see what’s behind the login.
Now you can! Since managemymarket charges for approved vendors only, and you’re not going to even contemplate approving vendors for at least a couple months, you’re in luck!
Sign up, and see what all the fuss is about. Signing up now will lock in 2011 prices ($13/approved vendor/market/year — going up to $15/approved vendor/market/year as of January 1, 2012) and there’s no obligation, so if you (or your board) decides against it, we’ll just take you out of the database. Plain and simple.
What are you waiting for?
Do you have an age limit for your market?
Here’s the story.
Now that the summer is winding down, market managers get to take a deep breath, relax, and regroup for next season.
Does this describe you? Or is it more like this:
-plan fundraiser
-work on a one-day festival
-get busy talking to your vendors about whether they’ll be back
-plan vendor potluck
You’re probably in the latter category, and won’t get to take a breath until about November.
But keep managemymarket in mind — we’re here to help you save time, money, and the environment!
When the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service was collecting data for the 2011 snapshot of farmers markets, they made themselves clear: their intent was to make the data open source. It’s only been a few months, and here’s what some people have been doing with this data.
We’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to add managemymarket to next year’s budget, and we’d like to offer a way to help.
managemymarket in 2012 is more robust than ever before (with many new features, and more to come!), and because of that, the price will increase to $15 per vendor, per market, per year.
But if you sign up now, you can lock in the 2011 rate ($13 per vendor, per market, per year) for the next two years.
And, if you’d like to save even more, we can offer a flat rate based on the number of vendors you anticipate — saving an additional 20% at least!
Reply to this email, call 503-878-8466, or fill out our contact form – we look forward to working with you!
An old funeral home in Kansas City has been turned into a farmers market. Read more here.
Are what make me happy to work with farmers markets!
Read the feel-good story here.
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A couple weeks ago, we sent out an email describing a bit about our web design. Since then, we’ve heard back from many of you — seems as though you might be interested in creating or updating your website! We can help. We’ll set up a website using a template for $349. Then, we’ll teach you how to update your website’s pages using the template so you’re not tied to us for maintenance. To see a real-life example, check out Woodland Park Farmers Market’s new site. You don’t have to be a customer of managemymarket to get a simple website, but if you are, there are some really cool add-ons for your site, such as the Interactive Market Map, a Complete Vendor List, and a type-ahead product search function that come with this design. |
First in a series. What do you think?
We realized that we have been adding a lot of tools for markets and their websites, and we thought that you might want to see how to incorporate everything into your website.
So, we created a sample market website. Check it out!
There’s been quite a bit of opinions on the FMC mailing list (not on it? sign up here — it’s a great resource) regarding the “America’s Favorite Farmers Market” contest on American Farmland Trust (learn more, and vote here). Essentially they give three farmers markets in different size categories the chance to earn “best” farmers market title. Someone asked the list to vote for her market. This created a flurry!
The best response was, “don’t try to be America’s favorite farmers market” and to try to emphasize to your community what exactly makes your market special.
What is that for you? What do you provide your community?
Has your area suffered from too many markets?
When will you reach the saturation point?
This article talks about the situation in Seattle.
What is it like in your area?
After you’ve approved vendors, there is so much more that managemymarket can do for you. Assigning your approved vendors to stalls in the “Stall Assignments” section not only saves you time, but the data populates in a number of places. If you haven’t already assigned vendors, click here to view the step-by-step tutorial available in our training resources.
When your vendors are assigned to a stall in the “Stall Assignments” section, each vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates appear in some combination in the following places:
Manager Side/Website:
- Complete Vendor List (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Product Search (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Interactive Market Map (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Most of the Accounting Section (Calculates stall fees based on market setup and Vendor’s scheduled dates)
Vendor’s side:
- Market dates — appear in the “My Markets” tab and “Calendar” tab — the vendor sees a calendar that shows all of their approved market dates for all the markets they attend. This is particularly helpful for vendors who are approved in more than one market, so that they can see at-a-glance which stall they’ve been assigned on each market day, and with one click, they can view their location on the Interactive Market Map.
You can also keep track of vendor attendance to see (at the end of the season) which vendors were good and not-so-good at letting you know when their schedules change.
This is a really good way to get out of the post-it problem — you can tell immediately where your market will have “holes” and you won’t be surprised on market day.
If you have sent us a map already, then populating your stall assignments is very simple! Click here to view that tutorial, or click here to email Andria.
a testimonial from a new customer |
 “I own and operate two markets in Idaho Falls, this is my first season using managemymarket and I can’t say enough good things about the system. I have spent the last two years building spreadsheets and maps in Excel to track everything from our market gross sales to mapping out each market day. I happily abandon all my own creations to using managemymarket on our markets. It feels like Christmas when I sit down at my computer, login and find not only money in my PayPal account but 5 or more new vendors awaiting my approval and admission in our markets. Great jobmanagemymarket team, I highly recommend every market use their tool!” |
Last week, Jennie, who runs Thursday Market at the Ville, signed her market up for managemymarket. Her market opens soon, so she quickly set up a new market (by going through the tutorials available online), and then she called us with a question.
In the time it took for her to pick up the phone and call us, a vendor had already applied to her market. Initially this was a bit disconcerting, since she wasn’t sure she’d put her “final answers” on the market set up, but once she realized her market was all set, this was very exciting for her.
A brand new market manager, setting up a brand new system, already got a potential coffee vendor!
It’s great to help markets.
Burnet Road Farmers Market opens with new management
Interstate Farmers Market adds another day
Portland Farmers Market moves a few blocks away
Woodstock Farmers Market is looking for volunteers
Hillsdale Farmers Market launches 10th year
