5 Goals for Pexmas at 10
Welcome to the new iteration of the Pexmas Blog! An opportunity for us to share some of the behind the scenes of running a small business, the programmes we are building, tips for others living the market life, some favourite local stuff and content from our traders and partners around upcoming events. Tell us more about what you’d like to see here in the comments!
As Spring beckons, we are now firmly entrenched in our 10th Anniversary year and a period of “doubling down” as I’ve been putting it, on Pexmas. We’ve delivered a lot of weird and wonderful projects over the years, from markets to public engagement work, festivals to enterprise programmes, hospitality to workshops. At the centre of it all is a community of small businesses and local partners in South East London and beyond - and that’s what we want to celebrate and invest in in this our 10th year!
So what are we looking forward to bringing to life this year? Here’s a little peek at some of our more interesting goals for 2022 - make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list to be the first to know when these things go live!
Create New Activities. You will hopefully have seen that we’re launching a new market for springtime this May - our Spring Fling will be a sustainble market to give us ideas on how to undertake that spring clean and glow up with less harm to the planet. There will be plenty shopping with small brands of course, but also a Fix and Remix area where you can learn how to repair or upcycle what you already have, make donations and swaps. We’re also adding in a year round (hopefully) workshop programme, where you can meet our traders, learn new skills and make your own gorgeous items to gift or keep. What else should we be doing? Find out more in our What’s On section.
Grow our Trader Community. We are looking at ways to provide more for the small businesses in our community. Training, development, sharing, peer support - we’re keen to find ways to have a year round relationship and network at your disposal. We’re starting with our Trader Panel, newly formed to feed in ideas and give us feedback about what works for small businesses. We’ll be introducing them soon.
Be More Sustainable. We are working closely with Plastic Free Peckham (who have lots of newness coming this year too!) and building environmental impact training and development for us and our partners into everything we do. Over the past 5 years we have been more and more concerned with creating a greener way of living and doing business. We want to reduce our own impact, but also find ways to share our learnings with our community, and support them to make greener choices too, in a world that sadly often makes those choices possible only for those with certain priviledges. How can we change that, or find ways around it? This is about the future for everyone.
Be More Viable. This is about the future for Pexmas. We have grown over 10 years with core guiding principles about access and value that keep Pexmas Markets open to a broad range of businesses. We don’t skimp on production elements, venue hire, insurances, marketing or staff. We don’t overcharge traders to make a profit, we don’t charge the public an entry fee to shop. We have delivered consultancy work for community focussed clients at other times of year to keep the company in the black, but at a time when these opportunities are growing more scarce, how do we keep the wolves from the door and retain our values, while still providing value for our customers? Big questions. This year we work out the answers.
Celebrate. It’s easy to get caught up in points like no.4 and forget just how much we have grown, all the things we have learned and what we have achieved. 10 years building a community of small businesses, making friends, faciliating relationships across our neighbourhood and being a part of so many stories. So we will be finding a way to celebrate this year with a proper party and a healthy amount of looking back as well as forward.
Have you made any goals for this year? I do find making a few helpful, though I like to leave space for the unexpected too! I’m definitely more of an organic, reactionary business person by nature, but there is always intent behind the decisions I make for my work, and that only comes from a having a few broad goals and a core set of values in place. If a new opportunity doesn’t take me towards those goals or sit comforatbly with those values, it’s not for me. If you are a goal setter, and you run a small business or project, we might have something later in the year to help you out, while we work towards no.2 and no.4! Wish us luck!