After nearly a year, I’ve finally had the opportunity to return to Chinatown Mall. For summer, they were hosting the Night Market series to help beat the heat. How else have they grown and changed since August 2024? Let’s find out!
Applying!
Since I was a vendor for last year’s Chinatown Market, I was included on the email list for future events. These newsletters were sent by Andrew Blooms’ team as they were collaborating with Chinatown Mall to bring these markets to life. There was a series of monthly markets from March to May, but sadly I happened to have plans on every of those Saturdays. Then fortune would have it that I could schedule on July 19th for their summer night market series, also monthly from June to August.
While Andrew announces the three dates for a market series and opens applications all at once, you won’t get notified if you’re accepted into a market until the month of. So for example, when the spring markets opened I did apply for the May event, but by the time I heard back from Andrew that I was accepted, I had already made other plans. Similarly, I did apply for both July and August in the summer series and haven’t heard about August acceptances yet.
The table price started at $25 for their first market, then $75 for for the spring markets, and finally $125 for the summer night markets. These fees do include a 6 foot table and two chairs provided by the venue, but three digits is fairly high for a four hour local market. For comparison, other events with similar fees include Marietta the Gathering at $100 for a 10×10 space, Smyrna Pride at $150 for a premium 10×10 space, the Goblin Market at $100 for an indoor 10×10 space and 8 foot table. The five times increase in table fee did make me nervous, but I really wanted to see how the Chinatown Market has grown in the past year.
Upon acceptance, we vendors were tasked with uploading images of our merch and ourselves we’d like to be included in Chinatown Market’s social media graphics. And Tuesday before the event we received our event’s graphics to share! We didn’t receive the same individual graphics as last year, but I understand 26 is a lot of vendors to make graphics for. I do really appreciate their design sense!
As we got closer to the event, I realized our market also coincided the grand opening for Andrew Bloom’s new gallery space, Blooms Emporium. Exciting!
Rolling Up!
Load-in started off a little disorganized. I arrived a little early around 3:45, load-in officially started at 4 PM, and ran into Andrew who let me know I should speak with the event coordinator to learn my table assignment. I waited about 20 minutes along with a couple other vendors for our event coordinator, Lavender, to show up and direct us. She let us know the basic layout she envisioned, three sets of four table rows within the courtyard area. It sounded like she wanted the vendors to be grouped by food versus art. All three of us were artists, so she let us unfold our tables and get started. “Assigned” tables ended up being first-come-first serve in practice, with one vendor even claiming three tables in the confusion. And our emails specifically told us not to expand horizontally and limit our booths to one table each >w<
By luck since I was one of the earliest artists I ended up getting the first corner spot towards the front entrance of the courtyard, but this also meant there was little space behind my table since I was right next to the food court door! It’s a little hard to know if my first corner spot served much advantage in the small space ^_^;; But I wasn’t able to put out my shirts stand as I originally planed and made a quick last minute change to my setup idea to include at least one shirt. Plus, it was just really warm as we were setting up, around 90°F, so by the time I was finished with my main table I just wanted to be done! I was jealous of the tables who get to set up closer to the stage, they were able to spread their items behind their table so much more with limited privacy >3< I had to take back some of my empty boxed to my car just to give myself more space! So that is something to keep in mind if you’re interested in vending at Chinatown Mall, the spaces aren’t created equal.
Since I had arrived so early, I did have extra time to order dinner! And of course I took the opportunity to order from the food court, with China Kitchen. I mean to check out the others but I love China Kitchen so much and their menu is so big! I have to say though… ordering the pan fried noodles as take-out, ah!!! It’s so big for its box!! I probably could’ve just ordered dine-in since I was just in the courtyard anyway. My neighbors, Mangosmani, were very kind and always pointed out to customers where I was when they expressed interest in my table. I was sitting right at one of the outdoor dining booths because I didn’t wanna get my food messy in the tiny space behind my table!
Night Falls!
Even before our official event start, 6 PM, there was a steady flow of regulars in and out of Chinatown Mall, and I even got in a couple early sales. Within the hour the place was packed and I heard from my sister, who was visiting for fun, that the parking lot was nearly full! It seemed in addition to escaping the heat, the evening hours also coincided very well with the dinner rush. I was fortunate to have ordered my food just before, wait times were over 30 minutes!
Music started around 6 PM, there was a mix of DJing and a live band throughout the night. Andrew Blooms himself even went up to play a few sets before the ribbon cutting. It added a good ambiance though there were times I had trouble having hearing customers ^^; I couldn’t help but wonder if placing vendors directly in front of the stage wasn’t optimal as it did block the musicians from view.
Overall the crowd was fairly diverse, I got the sense it was a mix of Chinatown Mall regulars, residents from the neighborhood, and folks from around Atlanta who’d heard about the event through social media. A mix of young folks, old folks, and families. I suspect the vast majority treated it as dinner out with a shopping experience attached. Both the food court inside and the food vendors outside, had consistent customers lining up. I really wanted to try the Season’s Best Tea booth, but every time I looked over until the end of the night the line would’ve been too long for me to leave my table.
As for artists, my sales were fairly consistent through the first three hours with a spike around 8 PM. Pass 9 PM the crowd slowed down as most people had eaten dinner and were ready go go home, without more people trickling in so late. My best seller by far was my Lucky Snakes! Perhaps no surprise, as they are my most Chinese art inspired item. Overall, smaller items moved the most, with no shirts moving again, but that’s to be expected since my shirt display was half-assed.
I brought my portable lights since our outdoor market would be open past sunset. But! I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the courtyard lighting was. I’d still recommend bringing some lights to help your table presentation, but worse case there was still plenty of light to see.
Blooms Emporium Grand Opening
The ribbon cutting was scheduled for 8 PM, and staff made an announcement on stage about 5 minutes before to gather attention. Naturally, the crowd did shift their focus so sales quieted down a bit, and I waited until the line was shorter to stop by the new gallery myself.
The new Blooms Emporium is a beautiful space! The mint walls are a refreshing take on jade and I love the small detail that the clothes rack is a piece of bamboo! There were both prints and originals from Andrew Blooms for sale, along with a lounging space, and a crafts corner. The featured craft of the night was red origami cranes with an instruction video playing on the projector.
I ended up folding a crane myself but didn’t know to write my name on it? There was some kind of game that I missed out on. I didn’t get to stay too long, but it looks like this gallery space is intended to stay! In addition to Andrew’s art classes, there may be other Chinatown Mall group activities hosted here.
Closing Time
Load-out was fairly uneventful. As things were around winding down by 10 PM vendors were ready to go after a warm evening of sales. I managed to get over to Season’s Best and order their final matcha latte of the night! There were a few stragglers around as we torn down our tables, but I was able to load my boxes in my wagon and make it to the parking lot pretty fast.
In the end, my revenue for the night market was a little under my last Chinatown event in August 2024. My table set up was fairly different since I’ve been playing with new techniques over the past year, but not having my most expensive items, shirts, on display prominently could explain the dip. Plus, I believe there were also more vendors than last time? I’m satisfied with how my sales for the night went considering the amount of visitors.
However, the raise in the table fee from $25 to $125, ouch! I’ve mentioned before that my goal for an event is to make three times back the table cost, and I just barely fell short, about x2.75. Which is a bummer! I definitely enjoyed the Night Market atmosphere and think I would really enjoy it as a visitor myself. Now that I’m on the other side, I still consider $125 to be a high price for their vendor booths. But I think there are vendors who can work with that price point if they sell higher-ticket items that match the audience. For example, I noticed many people carrying around the hand-poured candle creations of Mar’s Velas and Soaps.
The next week, we got a follow-up email from Andrew thanking us for our participation. Apparently the July event was the most attended yet, and moving forward they plan to limit the market to 50 vendors. There was also mention that vendors were also stationed in the “back hallway” and I actually had no idea about that? From the poster, it seems that there were at least 28 vendors in July, so wow! 50!
Andrew also linked a whole drive of event photos from their professional photographer, which is a really cool thing to share!
Billie’s Vendor Review
| Food | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Foot Traffic | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Attendee Vibes | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Restrooms | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Pokémon GO | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Heat | ⭐⭐ |
I’m glad I made the time to vend at Chinatown Night Market because I want to explore Asian American culture events for my business. I get the impression from both Andrew Blooms and Chinatown Mall they really want these events to take off and support local businesses.
The current booth price though will keep me from adding Chinatown Markets to my regular schedule… which, if anyone was wondering, I consider any repeating event I’d like to attend once a quarter to be on my “regular” list. I’ll be keeping an eye on my social media and deciding as Chinatown Market openings come up. Or you know, maybe if I can rework my booth to better match the audience. I definitely hope I can make it out to one as a visitor though!
If the booth price remains in the range of $125, I’d recommend the Chinatown Market to vendors whose items perhaps mostly fall within a range of $30. I would not consider it beginner friendly with that booth price. Now, it’s important to note the event’s not exclusive to AAPI artists, but the main draw of Chinatown itself is its place in Atlanta immigrant culture. So consider if your wares match that potential audience.
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