There are a number of benefits available to you as part of the Handmade Canberra Community in addition to selling at the markets. It is up to you to make sure you are accessing everything on offer, to ensure you are getting the most value from your annual Handmade Canberra Admin Fee.
Australian Made Directory
One of the most valuable things you will get as part of your Handmade Admin Fee is a permanent listing in our Australia Made Directory. The directory is where we send all of our call outs from local news and media, along with additional promotional opportunities to help get you in front of our large social media following and email database of over 100,000+ people, which is full of people who are passionate about handmade Australian products. It is also where our customers go to find you again after seeing you at our market.
To make the most of having your business listed in the directory, be sure to continually update your business profile listing to keep it fresh and exciting. This also assists you with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) within our site and helps drive traffic to your own business website. In our opinion, the Australia Made Directory is worth its weight in gold!
Applying for Markets and Online Promotions
You are only able to apply for our online or in-person markets if you are a part of the Handmade Canberra Community. Our markets are award-winning, indoors and are fully air conditioned and heated. Free parking is also included with easy access to the building for bump in and bump out.
Another amazing benefit of being a part of the Handmade Canberra Community is that we only require you to register once. Once you are registered with us, all your information is stored in your profile and allows you to easily re-register for each event. You no longer have to spend hours on market applications. When applications open for an event, you only need to check that the information on your profile is correct, upload new photos to showcase your best products and hit ‘submit’!
Access to our dedicated install team (Barlens) for our market is also available to you as a stallholder. Through Barlens you can hire power, tables, chairs etc. for the event. Simply use the order form in the Resources Area to order the items you require and Barlens take care of the rest!
Partner Discounts
We partner with several businesses that offer discounts to our community. One of the best discounts available for our stallholders is through Australia Post. There is a QR code in the Stallholder Discounts section of the Resource Area that will allow you to receive a discount on all the parcels you post when you present the QR code at your local post office.
If you are looking to grow your business, you may be interested in checking out our partners who provide services to help you do just that! Â Â The services our partners offer include digital courses on photography, help with search engine optimisation across your website and the opportunity to be part of a social media growth club. A full list of services from our partners can be found in the Stallholder Discounts section of the Resources Area.
Community Networking
An opportunity to network on the Saturday night after our market exists for all stallholders. These events let you get to know other makers and engage in meaningful conversation about business and life in general. It is a great opportunity to meet new people and expand your network of business contacts.
We also have a Stallholder Facebook Group which is a great place to ask for answers to questions you haven’t been able to find in the Stallholder Handbook or in the emails that we have sent you in the lead up to an event. We also ask questions via this Facebook group and sometimes will email surveys, that allow you to have your say in helping to shape the type of additional content (eg. education, blog posts etc.) we create for our stallholders. Be sure to get involved in these discussions if you want to help us to get the most meaningful content created for you!
Educational Resources
Our team are continually looking at ways in which we can help you grow your business. When your business grows, so does ours, and our team are committed to helping you by providing educational resources on topics we feel are important to you as small business owners.
We often add blog posts to the Resources Area on topics we believe to be most relevant to our stallholders. If you are new to the Handmade Canberra community, we recommend reading the Setting out Your Market Stall and The Psychology of Selling blog posts to get you started.
Often we will let you know about opportunities for our stallholders to attend webinars run by our partners. One of the webinars we have hosted was by the Australia Made Campaign, where our stallholders had the chance to find out more about how to become certified with the Australian Made Campaign.
We are so grateful to have you as part of the Handmade Canberra Community and you can rest assured that the team are continually looking for ways in which to enhance your experience with us!