Amateur Entrepreneurship
True or False: A place where buyers and sellers congregate for commerce, often in an unused fairgrounds or drive-in theater, is called a swap meet. Answer: True, if you live in Southern California or parts of Arizona. In most of the country, however, flea market is the preferred term although swap meet pops up here and there. Other monikers: trade day, open-air market, park ‘n’ swap, bazaar, jamboree and a smattering of one-of-a-kind handles like the Vend-A-Rama in El Paso, Texas. In fact, the Orange County Swap Meet will change its name early next year to the Orange County Market Place, owner Bob Teller said. “People don’t know what a swap meet is or a flea market or a garage sale. If you don’t want a garage, don’t go to a garage sale. If you don’t want fleas, don’t go to a flea market,” he quipped.
The garage sale is a kind of amateur entrepreneurship that has been on the rise during the past several years, experts say. “There’s a core cult that in many communities just goes bananas about these things,” said Pat MacDonald of MacDonald Classified Service, which produces several classified advertising trade publications. Although no one keeps statistics, the number of garage sales seems definitely to be rising, said Robert Scaife of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau. Such sales “are doing very well in the Southwest” because of economies depressed by oil-price shocks, Scaife said. “In the Northeast, they may not be quite as strong right now.” At the Recycler, a Southern California weekly paper filled with nothing but classified advertising, the volume of garage sale advertising has jumped 37%, compared to five years ago, but those numbers could be skewed because the size of the paper has doubled since then, a spokesman said. The Recycler’s San Fernando Valley edition had 285 garage sale ads one week in July, a popular month for the activity.
Small indoor swap meets that often are open daily and specialized events, particularly those dealing in computer paraphernalia, are a fast-growing part of the business. “A lot of the growth is in indoor swap meets. They do really well in the short term,” although they appear and disappear with brisk regularity, said Douglas Hrdlicka, president of the California Swap Meet & Flea Market Owners Assn. Specialized swap meets--focusing on electronics or cars or motorcycles or auto parts--are becoming more common. At the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, for example, the number of specialized swap meets and trade shows has risen sharply in recent years. “It used to be just 18 days at the fairgrounds (for the annual Los Angeles County Fair), but now it’s every weekend and some weekdays too,” a spokesman said.
Swap meets often see a jump in business when the economy worsens. So what does the state of their swap meets tell owners about the current state of the economy? Things have indeed gotten tighter, these folk-style forecasters say, based on the increased number of customers looking for bargains and new vendors looking for extra income. But it could be worse. The average customer “has a little less fun money,” said Jim Goodridge, publisher of the Great American Flea Market Directory. “I wouldn’t call it a recession. I’d call it a readjustment.” At the Flea Market in San Jose, “business has been very good because people down deep inside say, ‘I’ve got to get more for my money,’ ” said General Manager Tim Bumb.
