Urban market Third + Bird brings retailers back into the Bay's basement
Market brings local entrepreneurs into empty basement space at downtown Winnipeg Hudson's Bay location
After more than four years, the basement of the Bay in downtown Winnipeg will finally have retailers in it again — but only for a day.
The women behind the urban market Third + Bird have spent four months planning their latest event and more than a week assembling booths, installing art and filling the massive space with local products.
On Saturday, about 110 local vendors will sell their wares out of the basement. Several restaurants will offer coffee, doughnuts, Popsicles, perogies and more out of a makeshift cafeteria, and artists will show their work in a small pop-up gallery.
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"It's a really neat business model for a lot of young entrepreneurs to approach other businesses [and use] these underdeveloped spaces," said Chandra Kremski, the co-founder of Third + Bird. "There's something that we're doing that hopefully can catch on — bring these markets or young entrepreneurs into these spaces."
Not long ago, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra held a small performance in the space, but beyond that, it's largely gone untouched.
Normally, to get into the space you have to get pre-approval from an executive in Toronto, sign yourself in with a clerk, get a badge and be escorted downstairs.
But Kremski and her partner, Charla Smeall, saw an opportunity to take their vendors from a church in the North End to a more central venue with more space.
Kremski said the pair had to jump through a lot of hoops to get access to the space, but they'd do it again immediately.
'Ready to spend'
Third + Bird has been around for nine years. Smeall and Kremski started it as a place to showcase their art and as a fundraiser for local arts programs.
Both of them are now employed nearly full-time organizing the market, whose target demographic is young shoppers who Smeall says want to know who made their product and where it came from.
"That's our main demographic, but we're finding even younger," said Smeall, with Kremski adding, "They come to the market ready to spend."
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Most of the vendors make the products in their homes (and a few have storefronts) but some have had massive success ditching traditional business models in favour of online marketing and urban markets.
Kremski points to Manitoba success stories and Third + Bird vendors Gorp, Little Box of Rocks and Coal and Canary Candle Company.
Coal and Canary started out as a hobby for Amanda Buhse and Tom Jansen three years ago.
"We just started taking professional photos of these candles that we created, and next thing we knew, three months later, we got our first [wholesale customer]. They approached us because of Instagram. Then we got into the swag bags for the Grammys and the Oscars," said Buhse.
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Now, both are employed full-time at the business, have a staff of six people and sell out of about 250 stores in Canada and the United States.
Buhse travels to urban markets across Canada and the U.S. to sell their candles because, she says, "there was a niche that targeted our demographic that were coming to these shows."
Kremski said some vendors have travelled as far as Dubai and have moved on to work for international brands like Umbra.
Saturday's market has everything from boxes of rocks (yes, the ones that Gwyneth Paltrow recommended that time) to supplies for craft cocktails to more traditional craft-show fare like clothing and bath and body products.
Saturday's sale is on from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the basement of the Bay downtown. Admission is $5.