Newbie designer G. Anisha Kamath has found a new platform for kids' clothes: the modern flea market.
It started with as a test drive with a shared stall at one of the biggest fleas in the country - Bangalore's Sunday Soul Santhe (SSS). But it left Kamath with more orders than she could handle.
"I participated in Soul Santhe again, this time with a solo stall, and everything was sold," says the young mother and owner of the online children's boutique Rusche-n-Blume. In six months she participated twice and recovered her stall costs.
There was a time when the flea markets, the weekly bazaars, or haat or mandi were a staple of Sunday shopping, combining at once elements of family outing and a delighted discovery of unusual ware. Today, this outing has been given a contemporary twist.
Flea markets are flourishing in many cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore. The Sunday Soul Santhe in Bangalore and Pune, The Lil Flea (TLF) in Mumbai, Weekend Santhai in Chennai, and Cool Sunday Santhai in Coimbatore are some of the more popular ones.
A whiff of Goa's famous flea markets lingered from her first experience of it in 1996, says entrepreneur Asha Rao, who launched Sunday Soul Santhe (santhai/santhe means market in southern India) in Bangalore five years ago. It has become one of the most highly awaited weekend outings for visitors who binge-shop-and-eat, stay on for the live concerts and a fashion show and even give their furred friends a day out.
Santhe is probably the trendsetter for the contemporary flea market genre. It now has 250 stalls and averages 17,000 visitors. The next round, post-monsoons, is likely to be a two-day affair, including Saturday as well. A Pune edition started last year.
Rao thought of a market to give "mini start-ups" a helping hand. "The little bohemian streak in me wants to care about the artisan, not the person's educational qualifications," she laughs. Rao is delighted that participants who first started out with SSS have gone on to become successful labels - Chumbak, Peach Cobbler and illustrator Prasad Bhatt's Graphicurry are now known names.
So why this sudden revival of the flea market model? For IITian Alankar Jain, of The Lil Flea in Mumbai, the premise was simple. "Some of us felt that Mumbai was lacking in spaces for interesting creative people to share their creativity. We thought, why don't we do that?" recalls Jain. The venture, which kicked off about 18 months ago, is owned by his company Apricot Media.
The TLF is structured as a three-pronged festival - there is shopping, eating meals cooked by upcoming chefs and listening to music at live gigs. Jain says its fourth outing had some 30,000 visitors and saw the number of vendors more than double.
The contemporary flea is for the upwardly mobile middle-classes, both as consumers and as artisans. It picks up from where the more traditional art and handicraft melas left off by bringing in enterprising students, professionals, homemakers or moonlighters indulging their creative synapses fairly seriously.
"The upper and middle classes are putting up their own stalls and running them. These are the people who could have pursued an MBA, and in some cases have, but are still tapping into their creativity," Jain says, illustrating the difference between the older craft fairs and the flea.
The private flea markets amp up on visibility and marketing, something that upcoming small-scale artisans are unable to do on their own. The social media sites do the publicity for the vendors, and almost all of them have a zero-cost FB page.
Dipti Shah of Dana Spices has participated in TLF in Bandra, Mumbai, and SSS in Bangalore. Shah's father developed a cold press for traditional spices and she sells fresh ground spices made from organic raw material.
"TLF was really good. We ran out of supplies for we didn't expect such a response," Shah says. The stand-out factor for her was the interest from health-conscious people. "We were actually dealing with our target audience."
Kamath holds that flea markets are particularly good for gauging reactions to products and for spotting potential customers. "Plus, it is an outdoor atmosphere at minimal cost," says the lively Kamath. The stall costs range from Rs 3,000 per day to Rs 10,000, depending on the flea, location and season, adds Kamath, who has minutely researched the various types of fleas.
So there is the bazaar flea, corporate flea (weekend bazaars on campuses), mall flea, hotel flea, apartment flea and even the IT flea (dedicated to IT crowds in their office grounds). But the outdoor flea market, or the bazaar flea, is where the mood is.
"I love them. They have funky clothes and jewellery. The food stalls have variety. And there is always something new. I end up buying lots of stuff for myself and as gifts," says Roshan Chaudhuri, an IT manager who flea-hops during her travels.
So hearty has the response been to her bimonthly flea in Coimbatore that Cool Sunday Santhai now covers the whole weekend. The bazaar, in its 12th edition, is retired banker Meena Krishnakumar's baby.
"Flea markets need a personal touch for first-time vendors to be confident that the event will not be outsourced to an event management team," she says. Krishnakumar maintains a churn of 50 per cent new vendors. Big brands are welcomed as sponsors but not as vendors, as they would end up "swamping new talent".
The organisers of the fleas underline the new entrepreneurship and creativity that they see at the bazaars. But the main attraction of the flea remains its festive atmosphere. Rao's favourite endorsement is an email from a young girl who signs off with, "And thanks for creating such a safe place where you can wear cool clothes."
