Market traders should wake up: people don’t buy what they’re selling because they don’t want it
In Times of Malta this morning, in a report about the market traders of Valletta:
They told Times of Malta how since they had been moved a block down Merchants Street they had been “almost starving” and could “barely afford to maintain a family”.
They also took offence at the public’s reaction to the news.
“It hurts me that people in comments on timesofmalta.com were saying we are ignorant: we are not. And we do not sell rubbish either. Here, have a look at these items. I get them from the north of Italy. These are the same clothes you can find in shops,” Mr Buhagiar said.
Oh, right. Because moving your stalls some metres down the street is the reason why people don’t shop there anymore – because they can’t be fagged to walk a couple of corners further.
On what planet are these people living? If they imagine that that shifting their stalls to city gate will give them a sudden and permanent rush of business, they are going to be really disappointed.
People don’t buy at those market stalls because nobody wants that kind of thing anymore, and because they can get it, and better, at so many other places. And also because it’s not the kind of market people enjoy going to to browse and hunt about.
People from all over Malta fall out of bed early on a Sunday morning and haul themselves all the way to Birgu, battle for parking and then have nowhere to sit and have a decent cup of coffee – all because they enjoy nosing around at the flea market there. I see so many people I know on a regular basis, and obviously, none of them have said “What, wake up on Sunday morning and drive all the way there just to look at some junk?” They enjoy it. It’s fun. It’s the sort of thing that happens in cities everywhere.
But not the Valletta market – forget it. Like so many Maltese shop-owners, the stall-holders of Valletta still think it’s all about price and product. But it isn’t. Shopping now is all about the browsing experience, the hunting about, the sensory factor. In Sliema in the evening a couple of Saturdays ago, all the shops were empty, and this during the sales. Shop assistants stood in doorways. We walked past one empty shop after another.
But Zara was jam-packed. Why? It gives people the hunting experience. The many, many racks are packed with all kinds of different things, all jumbled up together (but in a good way). Shoppers have to hunt through the racks systematically or randomly to find something they like. They enjoy that. They enjoy the element of surprise, the serendipity, the joy of discovery.
I understood this instinctively even when I was a child. Aged nine, I was put in charge of a stall at the St Dorothy’s Primary School fair. The stall was laden with stuff like lipsticks in shades that had probably gone out of fashion, blue eyeshadow, bits of junk jewellery, old bottles of perfume. They were truppence each, but nobody was buying.
For some reason, my stall also included a pile of clean and empty plastic margarine tubs, which they optimistically expected somebody to buy. I spent a few minutes placing the lipsticks and other stuff in the tubs and closing them, put up the price to sixpence each, told my customers that what was inside was a surprise, and sold out within the hour.
The one way to ensure that people won’t step inside your shop is to have everything plainly on view and neatly regimented in ways that allow customers to scan it all even before they enter. That immediately removes the element of surprise and does not trigger their desire to hunt, so they don’t even bother going in.
It’s the same with the Valletta market. You know exactly what you’re going to find there, so you don’t bother. Yet the whole point of markets is the possibility of serendipity. Without that possibility, they fail. And that’s why the Valletta market is failing so badly: the predictability of the products thwarts people’s desire to browse and hunt.
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Reply to Wilson Click here to cancel reply
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150203/local/Hawkers-We-will-hide-a-blasphemous-ugliness-.554539
Min jixtri mis-suq jixtri biex ma jonfoqx hafna u jiffranka.
Jigi jaqa u jqum mill-kwalita tal-prodott ghax l-importanti li jkun irhis.
Allura minn ser joqghod jinzel apposta il-Belt u jhallas 1.60 ewro karozza tal-linja meta l-istess qalziet ta’ taht tal-UOMO isibu mis-suq tar-rahal tieghu bl-istess prezz u jekk tkun taf tiggebbed tiehdu irhas.
The bus fare is €1.50.
L-irhis ghali.
I suspected the stuff was counterfeit. But now we have it from the horse’s mouth.
You can’t get anything made in “the north of Italy” at that price. It must be counterfeit.
If the market was of a totally different calibre, like many markets are abroad, then I wouldn’t mind seeing it in the main areas of Valletta although not as a permanent fixture.
A market with well laid out, stylish stalls that sell good food, top quality local products, and seasonal items could add new character to Valletta but that’s a far reach from what it is today.
I bet they will blame Renzo Piano if Ordnance Street will not increase their sales.
Most of these sorts of markets are dying rapid deaths elsewhere in Europe unless they offer unique, different or genuine products.
Artisans markets, organic food markets are flourishing.
We can buy cheap, mass produced items anywhere. We don’t need to go to a market to get them.
People now go to markets for the eclectic, genuine things you might not find elsewhere – and for the atmosphere.
Lil Toni Zahra nghidlu insejt issemmi d-dagha, kliem baxx, hmieg u xi kultant xi glieda wkoll. Wieghed ihallashhom tal-vot.
Many of these hawkers have had very low sales for a long time no matter the locality. It is useless changing sites if their wares are horrible.
Putting stalls uglier than those of a flea-market next door to Piano’s splendid architecture is in the tradition of the MLP turning the magnificent fortifications of the Victoria Lines into pig sties.
Or Fort St. Angelo as a discotheque.
Il-Macina as MLP HQ and film studio.
Il bejjiegha ta’ fuq il monti qalu li l-progett ta’ Piano u mhux huma li ser ihassru d-dahla tal-Belt.
Sahansitra wiehed minnhom li jismu Twanny Zahra qal li huma ser jghattu dak il-mostru ta’ parlament u bil-kemm mhux qed ihossuhom xi eroj.
Dan huwa Laburist akkanit u taht in-Nazzjonalisti mar ferm tajjeb u kif ukoll.
Bejjiegha tat-tip tieghu figura kerha ser jaghmlu fid-dahla tal-Belt.
The adventure is the precisely why car boot sales are so popular.
Many years ago a flea market used to be held in the ditch below Girolamo Cassar Avenue outside Valletta and it used to be jam-packed.
Would that not be a good place to hold the market seven days a week?
Malta, the world has moved on.
The problem is that the market has become synonymous with cheap and tacky. Hence the descriptor: ‘tal-monti’. Increasingly few people want to be seen shopping at that market for fear of being labelled as cheap and tacky themselves.
The market traders have failed to consider branding in their business strategy, let alone invest in it. However, they certainly needed to because in order to sell cheap stuff outside and on shabby market stalls, you definitely need good branding.
Instead, they slowly built up a bad reputation, a bad brand, with their shady tactics and behaviour, and they let this snowball until the very word ‘monti’ came to signify all that you couldn’t possibly want.
Certainly, the bad branding was fuelled by shop owners who never liked the competition from street hawkers who don’t have to keep up with the same expenses they have.
To some extent, the street hawkers are aware of their bad brand and they want to re-brand themselves. That’s why, I think, they decided to blackmail a shady political party that was desperate to get into government; the Labour Party, for a new location and what they perceive as ‘neat’ stalls, in exchange for their votes.
But I can’t see how one can start to build a good brand by starting with blackmail.
The funny thing is that the Labour Party let itself be blackmailed and hence bought into a bad brand. And they didn’t have a good brand to start with themselves. Well, I guess they both bought into each other’s bad brands.
Now ‘tal-monti’ is not only synonymous with cheap and tacky but also with pulling the Labour Party’s strings and that’s going to be bad for business. On the other hand, the Labour Party will now be associated with ‘tal-monti’, adding to the cheap and tacky image it worked so hard to shed. What a huge mess.
The short-sighted business model that the market traders have adopted was good while it lasted. It won’t work anymore because most Maltese don’t want to buy cheap and tacky goods anymore.
No new location or ‘neat’ stalls will change that. And the Labour Party should better sell-off the bad brand that they bought, if it’s really serious about changing its image.
These stalls are as ugly as hell!
Malta was a pioneer in having a “North African community” kind of market, cheap, tacky, utilitarian, same as the ones that spread like wildfire throughout mainland Europe.
Having a proper European market remains an elusive dream, until then, just enjoy the yearly Christmas or Patches markets.
Not to mention having a proper European food market… light years away from that. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Europe is in shambles; culture was never safeguarded, it’s all gone to the dogs for the sake of political correctness.