So you are ready for your first market. Now what? Mental preparation is key to a successful first market. To prepare mentally, take a moment or two to visualize everything you will do through the day from your route to drive there, setup, selling and tear down.

It is important that you understand how you want your display to appear at your market. You have tables and products to display in your booth, but how will it look when you set it up? Before your first market, you must practice setting up your display.

Take your entire display out to the backyard and set up your tent. Setup your tables and basic display elements. While it may not be necessary to set up a full display with all your products, you should at least get a visual understanding of where your tables go and what you want to put on them. If you don’t have a backyard, take your display to a park or a parking lot or even an empty field.

Will you feel silly doing this? Probably, but it would be better to feel a little silly before the market instead of totally frazzled during your first market setup.

Before our first market, Monica and I set up our tent in our backyard. We put all of the tables and bigger display pieces in there and then we just let it sit. We would walk around it and even glance at it occasionally from inside the house. This allowed us to see from all of the angles how our display would appear to customers and gave us an opportunity to improve our display before the first market.

Your display will not be static. Over time, your display will evolve as you find out what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully, you will begin to introduce other products into your display. When this happens, it is important to practice setting up your display again.

Monica and I regularly have our display tables set up in our living room. We do this when we have major product introductions or new displays to put our items on. This helps us to visualize the setup and where things will go before we get to market.