Over 100 small businesses participate in Downtown Vancouver pop-up market

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Vancouver Etsy Collective, a community organization for supporting local makers, designers, and creatives, hosted a market with more than 100 vendors on Sept. 23 at the Robson Square Ice Rink.

The Fall Pop-Up Market marked the first time in four years the collective, run by organizers Valerie Braacx and Anita Chow, ran an event at the rink. 

“Customers really like meeting the maker, meeting the brain behind the creativity that they’re purchasing,” Chow says. “It really helps the purchaser [understand], ‘Why did this person do this? How are they doing it?’”

Vancouver Etsy Collective formed in 2017 after Etsy, an online marketplace, contacted a small group of sellers to run annual pop-up events in Vancouver as a part of the company’s initiative to support markets nationwide.

But after the COVID-19 pandemic, Braacx says the collective has returned to hosting in-person markets, which are independent of Etsy, because the public had come to remember and enjoy them.

Chow says the collective’s pop-up markets, which run four times a year, are about giving businesses the opportunity to do well.

“I feel like sometimes market organizers get a bad name or bad rep of just being profitable, but for [Valerie] and I, we’re just like, ‘If this is going to be good for the vendors, let’s do it,’” Chow says. “We want to make sure that people are coming and attending. We want the vendors to be successful.”

The market featured small businesses in categories that included fashion, home decor, food and drinks, art and design, accessories, and body care. The collective also had a booth where they sold tote bags, keychains, and stickers with all the proceeds going to the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation and the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.

Liberum Made owner Leo Recilla, who makes Pacific Northwest-inspired art from preserved moss, was among one of the vendors at the market.

“If I could inspire [an attendee] to do something unique and creative, that would be a win for me,” he says.

“To me, it’s just inspiring someone to take creativity outside of the box, because that’s really how I came up with a name for my business, too, [and] because I also work on different types of [mediums] of art.”

Recilla says “liberum” means free or unrestricted in Latin, and is his idea of being “free to be creative.”

For attendees who arrived early, the collective provided market cash, bills valued at $5 each that could be used at any of the vendors.

“This is an opportunity for us to encourage people to come and to shop, because if you’re given $10 to shop, you will probably buy a little bit more and support maybe a little bit more than you would have initially anticipated,” Braacx says.

At the end of the market, Braacx says the collective pays back the vendors for their market cash.

Chow says the collective also provides new sellers at their markets with education in marketing, displaying their products, pricing, and shipping.

Ahead of this event, the collective helped spread awareness around each of the featured businesses.

“We make a look book that has everybody in it, [and] we have inbound links on our website,” Braacx says. “Also, the after effects of people who had seen these vendors at their market, there’s the residual impressions, marketing, and brand awareness for all of the vendors that follow it.”

While it is hard to calculate attendance numbers due to high foot traffic and multiple entrances at the venue, Chow says the market received more than 2,000 RSVPs.

For more information, visit www.vancouveretsyco.com/.