Making money at flea markets
Page | 1 | 2 | 3 |

According to the National Flea Market Association, America has more than 5,000 flea markets (also variously called swap meets, farmer's markets and public markets) that employ more than 80,000 workers. The association estimates that more than 500,000 vendors sell in excess of $5 billion annually at flea markets.

"It's a humongous industry," says Jerry Stokes, founder of the association. "I consider it right up there with Wal-Mart when you compare a half-million vendors to Wal-Mart employees."

In addition to providing a livelihood for new immigrants and others on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, flea markets serve as a low-overhead incubator for new micro-enterprises. Starbucks Coffee Corp. began as a vendor in Seattle's famed Pike Place Market. The Cabbage Patch dolls were born in Southern craft fairs.

The association classifies flea markets into three categories by number of vendors: large (5,000 to 10,000) medium (500 to 5,000) and small (fewer than 500). The nation's largest is an annual affair called the Highway 127 Corridor.

"In August, it starts in Covington, Ky., and goes all the way through Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, 450 miles long," says Stokes. "They just set up on the roadside for 450 miles."

Gratz says that contrary to the perception of most brick-and-mortar businesses, flea markets don't steal customers, but actually generate new ones.

"They attract new customers who would not be coming to that neighborhood if not for the flea market," she says. "That customer then discovers your store and you've picked up a new customer that would not have found you otherwise."

Find your niche and mine it
Three years ago, Tony Plumb was an Indiana diesel mechanic whose body was giving out on him. Today, he and his wife Lori live the life they always dreamed of, traveling the country in an RV selling miniature die-cast cars at flea markets across the eastern United States.

"It's a learning process and we're taking the crash course," says Tony Plumb. "It hasn't worked as well as we hoped, but it hasn't worked as bad as it could. We're having the time of our lives, and we're real hopeful about the future."