farmers market sales
 

A few months ago I started selling fertilizers, plants, tools, and books at local farmers markets. The weather has been holding up here, mostly in the 70's during the morning and mid-day. Here's a picture of my double-wide stall in Leucadia CA today:

Re: farmers market sales
 

Nice!
I need to make Bananas.org stickers for you to give away with banana-related sales :)

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Jarred - I'm a professional graphic designer; would you like some Bananas.org stickers designed? It would be a hoot!

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Sure! I'd also put them directly on the potted pups.

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Good-looking booth, Richard, I hope you're doing well.

Harvey

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Looks nice Richard. How have sales been?

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What a stand! :)
You could also advertise on your pots...just an idea, if people don't want the stickers on their pups. Then when they get rid of their pots...the next person just HAS to see it...

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Thanks Mitchell! I'm grossing the equivalent of 30 hours a week at a retail job. The customer loyalty has been very high, so the business keeps growing!

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Way to go!

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Here goes! Bananas.org sticker beta. What do y'all think?

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Awsome!!

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Good Job lorax!

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lorax, That looks fantastic, Good Job :bananas_b

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I will gladly give those away at my farmer's market booth as well!

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Lorax, could the ".org" somehow be more pronounced? Otherwise it is an excellent piece of work!

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Sure can! The smaller "B" is also bothering me... I'll make the mods tonight and you'll have a new version in the morning.

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Looks good... but I count 6 colors, yes? Yikes!
Example of sizes and color guidelines:
Contagious Graphics White Vinyl Sticker Pricing
That would probably run something like $1,000 for 1 or 2 thousand stickers.
That's why I never got stickers of our logo yet... too expensive to do it nicely!
Do we have a member here with a sticker factory, lol?



(edit, I now see seven distinct colors!)

Re: farmers market sales
 

No, but it is much cheaper to print here in Ecuador, so I generally end up designing in full colour.... 1,000 six-colour stickers here is about $100 USD.

The other thing I could do is simplify to 3-colour. I'll start a new thread tomorrow for those.

Actually, Jarred, if you tell me which font you used to do the logo it will make life much easier for me - for that beta I separated each letter of the logo in Photoshop, saved them as transparent-backed GIFs, and placed them into the Illustrator file that contains the nanners and other text. If I had the font, I would have complete control over the colour without any excess hassle, and I wouldn't have to switch between raster and vector.

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PM on its way

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Jarred- For many years I had a sign and silk-screen business. I got rid of my big electric press, but I still have some hand operated screens. We could certainly produce some stickers, especially if we could tweak the design a little, and cut down on the number of colors. When I had the business, we did mostly real estate, traffic, and political signs. Here is an old picture that I found:
[IMG][/IMG]
The ones in the picture are 2 x 3 feet, and use 3 colors. The red letters have ¼ black borders. At one point, some customers asked for stickers, to put over the, "FOR SALE" section, like, "SOLD", or, "FOR RENT", etc. I found a place that had sheets of pressure sensitive vinyl, and they would score the peel-off backing, wherever I wanted it. One time, when I went there to pick up stock, they asked me if I could do stickers for gas pumps, for Sinclair Oil Co. (I think now defunct, or taken over) I ended up making several thousands of those, with their little dinosaur logo.
Now it depends on what size these stickers we are talking about. If they are six inches, or more, long they would probably best be done silk-screen, on vinyl. However, if they are only an inch or two, they could probably be done on polyester (aka mylar) with a color laser printer.

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See, and if you go Laser to Mylar it cuts the costs dramatically.

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One time, when I went there to pick up stock, they asked me if I could do stickers for gas pumps, for Sinclair Oil Co. (I think now defunct, or taken over) I ended up making several thousands of those, with their little dinosaur logo.

John , your dating yourself a bit there buddy! I used to play with the little dinosaur toys they used to have out when I was a kid in the 60's. I still have an old 8' "put a tiger in your tank" banner too hanging in my shed. Some day I'll get to cleaning out that shed!

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Revised designs are in the Banana Stickers thread, in three colours for vinyl.

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Yep, I'm a geezer.

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Are these ready yet?

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In post #1 of this thread I posted a picture of my Farmers Market sales in Leucadia last Fall. Since then, we've added quite a bit. Here we are in Mira Mesa today, with 160 varieties of veggies, herbs, and fruiting veggies; 30 kinds of fruiting trees and berries; soil, coir brick, orchard bark, perlite, etc.; containers (pots) at rock bottom prices; and all manner of nutrients and soil conditioners. That's my daughter Tracy doing the Vanna White thing on the right. At age 14, she is able to run the entire operation by herself and earned the title of "Director of Merchandising and Shipping".

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Was thinking about the possibility of doing the same thing at Farmers Market, along with several horticulture and garden shows locally. What does California require for Swap Meets and Farmer's markets?

My browsing in Georgia revealed the possible need for Incorpartaion and/or State Business Licensing ($100), Sales Tax Regististration (Free), County Business Permit ($100), Annual Renewals of each Lic. ($30 + $30), etc. After adding it all up I put my plans on hold. Codes also say vendors have to display these permits at their retail site.

I was curious whether folks take the risk and/or the enforcement bureaus look the other way for small entrepreneurs?

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If you declare yourself as a sole proprietorship and use your legal name as the declared business name, you can skip the Incorporation and probably the state licensing. You need not use your middle name, and do not add any words to the declared business name. For example: if your name was David Soe, then writing name of business "David Soe" on legal forms but putting "David Soe Nursery" on business cards and signs would be o.k. However, writing "David Soe Nursery" on legal forms would not.

If you live within a city limits, then you might find that the city business license is cheaper than the county license.