Flea market provides vendor, consignment services - News - The Daily Telegram - Adrian, MI

Flea market provides vendor, consignment services - News - The Daily Telegram - Adrian, MI:

As someone who regularly sold items on eBay, Brian Mulligan used to think it would be great to have an actual storefront from which to sell things. And as it so happened, his mother-in-law, Ada Marvin, had wanted to do exactly that for a long time too.

Mulligan and Marvin co-own the new Maple City Flea Market at 1061 S. Main St. in Adrian, operating it along with Mulligan’s wife, Deb, and Marvin’s husband, Dennis. The business opened May 3, with a grand opening celebration in the works for the end of June.

Maple City Flea Market has 22 vendor booths selling both new merchandise and what Mulligan called “upscale resale.” It will also sell items on consignment.

Merchandise will change continually as vendors and consigners bring in new items, and as new vendors come in. Currently, a visitor walking around the various booths will find wares such as collectibles of various kinds, NASCAR merchandise, CDs and DVDs, handcrafted items, antiques, purses, artwork, doll furniture, toys and glassware. What the owners have humorously dubbed “the man cave” contains everything from garden implements to power tools. And for coin collectors, a display case in the front of the market houses a wide variety of them being sold by a local dealer.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” Mulligan said, with the exception of clothing, which the market will not accept except for the T-shirts and hats some vendors are selling.

Mulligan and the rest of his family are intent on keeping their market neat and appealing. “We don’t want it to be junky,” he said. “It’s a clean, friendly place that’s family owned and operated.”

All vendors have to do is rent booth space for a fee, bring in their merchandise and tag the items. The price tags all have numbers on them identifying the seller so that the market itself can handle all the sales at its own register. This makes it convenient for the vendors, because they do not have to be on-site selling their own merchandise and because the market deals with the sales tax.

People who wish to consign items can do so for 30 days. If the item does not sell, the owner can either pick it up, or lower the price and re-consign it for another 30 days.

With both vendors and consigners, the market keeps a percentage of what the merchandise sells for.