Today we’d like to introduce you to Hayley Matthews-Jones.
Hayley, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’m from London, where market squares are a way of life. My local market in Greenwich, is a World Heritage site, hosting some of London’s most creative designers, makers and antique dealers every weekend. After moving here in 2008, I really just missed London’s markets. It’s such a key part of life in England, with every town square having a busy marketplace selling produce, meat, clothing, art, antiques – all kinds of goodies. I wanted to bring some of that street culture to life here in Minneapolis, so started the craft market in 2015, and added Minneapolis Vintage Market in 2018.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
The pandemic has obviously been our greatest challenge to date. We closed our markets down completely from March of 2020, to June of 2021. After the initial shock of what it means to have your whole business model disrupted wore off, we got to work. I had already planned to release a digital marketplace to accompany our live events, but had that on my to-do list as a 6-month project. When the pandemic hit we gave that our full attention and cranked out a fully integrated digital marketplace for our craft market in 6 weeks. We host 250+ local artists in our online store. They are responsible for all their listings and fulfillment, but we make it easy for customers to purchase from as many artists as they want and check out in one easy transaction. That enabled our artists to continue having a sales platform for their work at a time when their income from markets and art fairs was completely wiped out.
As you know, we’re big fans of Minneapolis Craft Market and Minneapolis Vintage Market. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We host pop-up markets for artists, makers and vintage sellers at venues throughout the Twin Cities. We currently serve more than 1,400 artists and 250 vintage sellers with our events. We’ve worked hard to build community over the past seven years, through growing our event offerings, adding a digital marketplace and building a business that has prioritized the safety of our community over profits during the pandemic, we’re proud to be constantly evolving to best serve our creative community.
You can find our craft markets and digital marketplace at mplscraftmarket.com, and our vintage markets at mplsvintagemarket.com. Both markets accept vendor applications year-round, so if you’re looking to get started selling with us, this is your sign to apply!
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I’ve always said that Minneapolis is a small big-city. That makes it easy to network and find people in your industry because you’ll keep seeing the same names pop up, whatever your chosen field is. As always, any relationship is built on trust. To build that, you have to keep showing up in those spaces, keep building relationships, decide what your values are as a business or professional, and let those guide you into any collaboration, partnership of mentor relationship. I’d recommend immersing yourself in spaces where you might be able to build those relationships. My two favorites to recommend are The Coven and the Pollen community.
Asking other professionals for their time and expertise is a big ask, so make sure that before you approach someone, you have a clear ask. If you are looking for guidance on a specific topic, or have a particular question in mind, sometimes it can be better to directly ask for that. I often get requests for coffee dates “to pick my brain”, and while I would often like to do those, asking for an hour out of my day when I don’t know what you might need is going to be tough unless we already have a relationship. It’s much better to contact someone and say, “I saw you did this, and I’m wondering if you can share what tool you used?”, or “Can you recommend someone to help me with X?” I’m a lot more likely to be able to provide those types of answers over a quick email, so that is typically the approach I use when reaching out to others as well.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@mplscraftmarket.com | info@mplsvintagemarket.com
- Website: mplscraftmarket.com | mplsvintagemarket.com
- Instagram: @mplscraftmkt | @mplsvintagemkt
- Facebook: @mplscraftmkt | @mplsvintagemkt
- Twitter: @mplscraftmkt | @mplsvintagemkt
Image Credits
Darin Kamnetz
