Swat some fleas

It was really quite an experience, not from swatting flies or any similar breed (even though WL smashed a really huge cockroach as my stall's opening ceremony! *yicks*), but from my first flea market experience.

The storytelling for kids and various ethnic performances really brought more life to the atmosphere, and livelier music in the air did give us more sales. Though there could have been more publicity, it looks and is better than your typical pasar malam save for the alarm clocks constantly beeping 2 stalls away from mine!

(My stall photo courtesy of WL's really cool mobile phone 'cos the pics turned out really sharp & nice, but we only managed to take 2 photos through it all! ;P)

I was blessed with beautiful weather, good stall location and wonderful people to help me through the process - that includes teaching me about body language, what to say to entice more sales and taboo words. Given that I came from an IT background, I have so much to learn!

The thing I had to refrain myself from doing is to browse and buy stuff from other stalls. Well, as Raine and Albert suggest, we can do barter trade and mobile sales too - excellent ideas that we didn't have sufficient time to put to action.

I have also learnt that balloons have amazing power over children and perhaps helium balloons can be brought into play if we organise one with a larger scale. And maybe clowns too. Waha, I know Cass cringed at that thought. I was just kidding, gal.

From sorting out and packing the stuff to setting up and decorating the stall to the actual sales, it's a lot of preparation work and efforts. I made sales of $92 and managed to get a profit of close to $50 from my pile of so-called "valuable junk" after deducting the rental and other expenditure. Not bad la. At least that sounds more sane than doing my 1km-2kg-5buck calories-burning stunt.

O, the experience of meeting different sorts of people was pretty interesting.

It seems to me that the more I talk about this, the more "junk" friends think they need to get rid of for more liquid cash. You can check out these various flea-ing spots available in Singapore.

Well, maybe I'll start a flea market guide for stall owners' blog - for publicity, competition, sharing of experience, FAQs, surveys, dos and don't. How's that?