ATL Pride Artist Market ’24 Review

Whew! Buckle up because this will be a long write-up! Not only is Atlanta Pride a two day event, I’ll also be comparing and contrasting 2024 with 2023. While Atlanta Pride may be one of the oldest LGBTQ festivals in the US, the Artist Market was established just last year! So as a returning vendor, I hope to offer some unique perspective.

Vibes Immaculate

This year my sales for performed far beyond my expectations. It’s been my best show of 2024 so far, and compared to last year, my sales increased threefold! I’d attribute the success both to my improved booth setup and the Artist Market’s new location. Learning from past challenges, I invested in a large wagon to carry my wares and woke up bright-and-early to snag Piedmont Park garage parking. $35 dollars a day for festival rates, by the way. By saving precious physical energy, I was able to pack more merch and display items to make my booth fabulous.

The attendees’ vibes were phenomenal! I’ve told my peers before, I had never seen a happier crowd than those at Atlanta Pride and that remains true. Everyone is excited to be at Pride, and thus they’re excited to be at your table!! You’d think that with a good amount of corporations or organizations handing out free branding materials, that would compete with sales, but I didn’t get that sense at all. If anything, it was helpful that customers came up with giveaway totes because I forgot to bring more paper bags on Sunday! There were a few times when children got confused that my table items were for sale, but nothing that stood out from how children usually are, haha. Even I made out with a few free items, my favorite has to be from the “Kamala is brat” armband I got from the Dekalb Democrats.

The view from behind my table, Saturday 5 PM

The crowd was fairly diverse, perhaps the one of the most diverse of shows I’ve vended at. In addition to the expected range of gender identities and sexual orientations, there was also a wide range of ages from elders to what I believe they call… Gen Alpha. As such, my sales mirrored this variety with most item categories performing equally well, and a healthy mix of big and small spenders. Predictably, my Pride themed art did fantastic, but cute animal art was also popular. I was able to meet a lot of fellow reptile owners. Perhaps the only noticeable item to lag were my 11×17 art prints, understandable since they’re large size makes them bulky to carry outdoors. Sales seemed busiest after lunch until the early evening on both days, with a noticeable bump in traffic on Sunday as the parade was letting out. Credit card payments still reigned supreme, with about a 7 to 1 ratio to cash. Atlanta Pride 2023 was the first event that made me consider not having cash in the future! I think it’s still here to stay for a bit though.

Overall, my favorite thing about Atlanta Pride is the people! I got to meet so many new faces and see familiar folks, it felt like I could hardly rest between talking and kept on my feet. My fellow vendors were also a kind and creative bunch, I think there was a good variety in the art styles and merchandise offerings.

Kamala is brat.

2023 vs 2024

Now, some brief history on the Artist Market. As previously said, the first Artist Market was organized in 2023. When I was accepted, I met the staff member who started the Artist Market, Mike, over the phone. He had told me the intent was a more affordable alternative booth price for art-focused small businesses. Traditionally, the Atlanta Pride Marketplace, is composed of three booth tiers: nonprofits, small business, and corporations. The tiers increase in price respectively, from a few hundred dollars to a couple thousand! Unfortunately, now that the 2024 event is over I can’t find the exact prices at time of writing, but to compare the entry for the Artist Market was $35 in 2023 and $285 in 2024.

Woah! A big price increase? Not to worry, the price increase was to cover rental equipment so Atlanta Pride could put out a large tent for the Artist Market to be closer to foot traffic. A big critique from 2023 was that the Pavilion location was just awkwardly far enough that a vast majority of attendees didn’t visit us. And I will say, the new location and better signage were incredibly successful at bringing in more eyes to our Artist Market. I made it out of 2023 okay since I had lots of Pride relevant merchandise and was willing to forgive a lot for $35 in fees, but I know a lot of other vendors were unhappy with sales. In fact, about half of the vendors didn’t even return on Sunday in 2023! So that Atlanta Pride took steps to address the location issue did quell my concerns on the price and gave me confidence they wanted us to succeed leading up to the event.

My booth from Atlanta Pride Artist Market 2023.

However, another big difference between the two years was communication from Atlanta Pride to Artist Market vendors. In 2023 I got a phone call from Mike to let me know I was accepted into the Artist Market, and allowed me to choose my table placement. Then Mike continued to give us information though Eventeny DMs and we were invited to a Zoom call orientation for additional vendor and parade information. During the orientation, I noticed a focus on Marketplace vendors and almost no specific messages for those of us in the Artist Market, but the main takeaway was how load-in and load-out would work.

Now, because of how Piedmont Park is a historic area without vehicular travel in its base design, Atlanta Pride is particular about load-in and load-out. Vendors were to arrive at the park entrance in teams of at least two people, unload their vehicles, and then one vendor member would go park their car while the other went with staff members in golf carts to deliver their load to their assigned spot. Since I’m a one-person team, early on I decided to not use this golf cart service and kind of ignored the particulars.

Was able to fit my whole table set up in one trip!

Fast forward to July 2024, I message Mike on Eventeny to ask when Artist Market applications would open up. I get a reply back that applications would open up soon and also that Mike no longer worked for Atlanta Pride. Oh dear! I apply in August, a little cautious that the price had increased so much but optimistic since my 2023 sales were good considering. I get another phone call to first hear of my acceptance and got an explanation for the price increase. And then a second phone call which went to voice mail, that explained the basics of how load-in would work. Which again, I ignored because I planned to just use my wagon. No Eventeny DMs or Zoom invites for 2024. It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon when I was talking with a neighboring vendor, who was tabling at the Artist Market for the first time that I realized… oh… the staff never did tell us how load-out was supposed to go, huh? Many of the new Artist Market vendors were completely unaware of what the plan for load-out would be, and it just slipped under my radar because I happened to have the info from the previous year in my head! Fortunately, we were able to find a staff member, Robert, who came by table to table to give the down low on Saturday load-out, Sunday loading-back-in, and Sunday loading-out-a-final-time.

So it had turned out somewhere in the growing pains between 2023 and 2024, Artist Market vendors were left out of the loop on communications. Turns out, there was a 2024 orientation meeting and we weren’t invited! I heard about it from other vendors at the traditional Marketplace. As Robert explained how we could use the golf cart services to help us take product home if we felt unsafe leaving it overnight, he also admitted that the Artist Market’s Sunday schedule of 3-8 PM was in conflict with the golf carts’ schedule 7-10 AM for Sunday load-in. That scheduling seems to be a holdover, I remember asking Mike about the late start before and he said it was to allow artists the opportunity to watch the Parade. Even though the Marketplace was scheduled to open at 11 AM both years.

So in 2024, a few of us vendors agreed to show up early to set up Sunday morning. Even if I didn’t need the golf carts, I still wanted to beat the Parade traffic. If enough of us opened early we could still draw in customers and I must say it worked out as planned. About half of us showed up before 2 PM with our tables open. Activity certainly picked up Sunday afternoon when the parade let out, but Sunday morning was never absolutely dead. I did choose this time to goof off, since Saturday was so busy I only got bathroom breaks. Overall, I’m very grateful to have taken the extra time to come early and glad we were able to do it together!

Stopped by Sean’s Heart of the Park for Sunday Breakfast.

Billie’s Vendor Rating

Food⭐⭐⭐⭐
Foot Traffic⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Attendee Vibes⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Restrooms⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pokémon GO⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Gay⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

In this year’s Atlanta Pride Artist Market, I had the big advantage of last year’s experience. I know for some of my fellow vendors the lack of information was a huge stressor. My hope is these dips were honest mistakes and that Atlanta Pride will make earnest efforts to be communicative with all vendors in the future. Both years, Atlanta Pride Artist Market has been very successful for me and I hope I can return! There’s also just something about… being gay and touching grass. A bunch of us! Doing it all at once!

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