It’s been a week or two since my last Market Report/update - the start of the season always overwhelms us with a large number of events and activity. Our pace of life begins to level out in June, so it feels good to come up for a bit of fresh air.
Guess what? We’ve already exceeded $1 million in vendor sales for 2019! This is a fairly incredible milestone, and it came much faster than ever before due to our efforts in Collegedale. YTD, our vendor community has sold $1,149,918 of locally grown, produced and created products through our markets. What an amazing accomplishment!
So what are people buying? Check out the chart below which shows Sales by Product Segment below:
As you would expect, Local Foods and Agricultural products lead the market at about twice the pace as each other segment – concessions, home and personal goods are roughly equal in total segment sales (Personal/Home goods have some overlap, but technically we show Personal Goods selling better than home goods).
What about sales by venue? This graph makes it clear:
The Chattanooga Market at the First Tennessee Pavilion is (and will likely remain) our flagship, posting 10x the sales/traffic as each of our other markets. But in the #2 spot is Collegedale – which is remarkable given that we just launched it. I can not emphasize how excited I am by this early success – we are exceeding all early milestones at the Commons, and it has a bright future ahead.
The Collegedale Freedom Festival (July 3 Fireworks, Entertainment and Market) will be announced soon; once again, we are organizing the event and will begin accepting reservations for food trucks, artisans and others to participate soon. Be sure to watch the Vendor Forum for more details!