Happy May y’all! Spring is here and even though we’ve have been experiencing some pretty gray weather here in LA we are ready for picnics, bbq’s and outdoor entertaining. With Memorial Day around the corner we have rounded up some of our favorites DIYs and recipes for you to check out!
Studio DIY Pom Pom Picnic Blanket
The Best Memorial Day Recipes from Food and Wine
Clip-on Picnic Utensils from Oh Happy Day
We can't wait for The 7th Annual Unique LA Spring Market this weekend! Save the date for April 30th and May 1st! Aside from shopping our curated selection of over 250 vendors, we've lined up some pretty rad perks for shoppers who attend over the weekend, including free mini mani's, watercolor DIY's, Oh! Snap portraits and gift wrapping - plus free drinks and snacks from GT's Kombucha, Pop Chips and Luna.
You can buy your pre-sale tickets here or buy tickets at the door (cash only). More event details can be found here. Make sure to follow @uniquemarkets on Instagram and Snapchat for the latest news and behind the scene photos.
We are also launching our exclusive Snapchat filters for you to use at the event...try them all!
See you soon!
The 7th Annual Unique LA Spring Market is coming up! That means it's time to start planning your visit and figuring out what to buy for mom (don't forget about Mother's Day!). Check out the look book and list of participants and join us April 30th and May 1st at DTLA’s California Market Center for a day of shopping, drinking and snacking from over 250 vendors!
Have you heard? We are on Snapchat and Instagram! Go behind-the-scenes with vendors, check out unique office life, and all our crazy shenanigans by following us @uniquemarkets
We are spreading the love this Valentine’s Day by sharing some of our favorite DIY projects. Skip the typical flowers and chocolates and make your own unique gifts or gather a few friends and make a party of it! Click the images below for links to a few of our favorites!
Printable Tattoos from Studio DIY
Crafting Party Ideas from Oh Happy Day
DIY Chocolate Ring Pops from Brit + Co
Vendors! Applications are now available online for the #UNIQUELA 2016 Spring Market! It takes place April 30th and May 1st at the California Market Center in DTLA. Applications will be available until midnight February 29th. For more information click here.
We are very excited to announce that Unique Markets is expanding in 2016! New York City, New Orleans, Toronto and Vancouver we are coming at you! Stay tuned for details as we lock-down venues and finalize show dates!
By Financial Planner and Small Business Consultant Paco Nicole
HAPPY FUCKING NEW YEAR! Congratulations, on surviving another calendar year. It’s no small feat.
The start of the year is a natural inflection point for most of us. We make resolutions and with the beautiful potential of the 12 months that are ahead of us, achieving our goals feels totally and completely within the realm of possibility.
Through my experience working with clients and in firms, I’ve learned the best way to get the most of your year, is to take the time to examine how you did last year and reflect on what you want to achieve this year. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve with a clear vision in mind. So make the time for you and your business. Pause and be mindful about setting things up for a killer 2016.
Here is a list of six things you can do to make sure you start your business on the right foot in 2016. I recommend taking a full day off to go through the steps I’ve outlined below. It’s going to take a lot of mental heavy lifting, but you and your business are worth the investment. In fact, you owe it to yourself.
The holiday season is in full swing and we couldn’t be more excited! Hosting a party? See below for our Winter Recipe for Mulled Wine Punch by Rachel Mae Furman, Leisure Expert of cocktail and lifestyle blog smokeandhoney.com
We cannot wait for The 8th Annual Unique LA Holiday Market this weekend! Aside from shopping from our curated selection of over 350 (!!!) vendors, we've lined up some pretty rad perks for shoppers who attend over the weekend, including:
You can buy your tickets pre-sale here or buy tickets at the door (cash only). Event details here.
ADDRESS: 110 E 9th St 13th Floor LA, CA 90079
HOURS: Sat & Sun 11 AM - 6PM, ticket is good for booth days.
Attention Holiday Shoppers...Unique LA is this weekend! December 5th and 6th at DTLA’s California Market Center. We know holiday shopping can be stressful so we want to make it as fun, festive and pain free as possible.
To keep help keep you going we have a great selection of food and drink options for you to visit, including a SQIRL pop up. The Silver Lake Café will be bringing their famous brioche and ricotta toasts and jams to the market, so you can refuel and recharge while picking up some gifts for the foodie’s in your life. Check out the rest of our Gourmet Edible vendors here!
For all of you planners out there here is the Vendor Directory so you can get you shopping lists ready ahead of time!
Photos from Bon Appetit
We gathered a handful of articles to help small business owners as the hectic holiday selling season begins. Bring your A Game this year!
1. Review Your Business Goals and Objectives
If summer is a slower time for your business, take a few days to review your business goals and set new objectives. Work with your staff to gather as much input as possible to think of new ways to drive sales, reexamine company goals for the rest of the year and evaluate your company's performance from the start of the year until now. Are you on track? Where can you improve? Can you cut costs? Have you reached the goals you set earlier in the year? Explore tapping into a new demographic, creating a new product or service, or improving upon existing products/services. A little reflection goes a long way!
2. Plan Ahead
Now is the perfect time to plan for the fall and winter. This will allow you to utilize these slower months for extensive research and gain feedback on your ideas. Do you want to have a contest for Back to School season? What about other holidays - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas etc.? What can you do now to plan for the upcoming months? Once you have your campaign idea or a new approach, make sure you keep your customers in the know. This will create anticipation and build interest in what’s to come. Try planning something that involves user generated content. This will encourage your customers to engage with the brand, and allows you to monitor its success throughout the process.
3. Launch a Summer Sale or Promotion
This is a great time to spice things up and have a sale! Once you decide on what sale you want to enact, create graphics and advertise on social media, your blog, website and send out an email campaign. Whatever route you chose, make sure you stay active in order to maintain the promotion throughout its lifecycle.
4. Throw An Open House or Event
Another great way to boost sales and bring in customers is to host an event at your business. This could consist of showcasing your current products, or launching a new one. This allows you to draw in customers and create a community with office tenants or local companies around your business. With your event or open house, you can create gift bags, have food, music, and drinks! As always, don't forget to advertise your event by posting on social media, emailing invitations, creating and Eventbrite page, contacting local newspapers for press etc. Any type of event also gives you an excuse to create a buzz on social media or another media platform, which will continue to spread awareness about your business and pay off in the long run.
5. Collaborate with a Local Brand
What better way to boost sales than to work with another local brand? This allows both of your business to combine your audiences, and give your customers something to be excited about. Now is the perfect time to approach a brand you admire and one whose aesthetic matches your own about collaborating on an event, product, sale, giveaways etc. Think of ways both brands can mutually benefit. Can you work on a social media campaign where your brand gives a shout out on their products and vice versa? Combine resources and be creative!
I love my apps. I use them daily. They've almost replaced coffee. I have panic attacks when I look down at my phone to see 'shaking icons' and think I've accidentally deleted them (tell me I'm not alone here...). They have me under their spell. But it's not just a frivolous love affair, it's a mutual beneficial relationship. I give them some of my time, they help my business and my life. So yeah, it's love. What are some of my new favorites? See my must-have list below...
PHHHOTO
Visual geniuses and brands listen up! Phhhoto is my newest addiction and because it hasn't reached the masses yet it is the ideal time to get on board and start gaining a following! Very similar to Instagram, this awesome app allows users to make instant moving images and share them. You can scroll and look at their curated collection of #wow posts, browse your feed made up of friends and most important you can upload your pieces of moving art. It takes a bit of getting used to before you figure out how to create good posts but you'll get the hang of it. And become addicted like me!
SHYP
This app will save you time, and if you own a small business your time is worth money! Shyp is an on-demand shipping app... Basically, they come to you to pick up all your items, they safely package them (yes, no more need to buy peanuts, look for packaging tape, etc.) and send them with the best-price carrier. I just sent my mom a bunch of little gifts and simply turned them over to Shyp, who packaged them into a box and shipped it for me. No more waiting in lines at the post office! They are open 7 Days a Week (8am-8pm local) in San Francisco, New York City, Brooklyn, Miami, Los Angeles.
TouchRetouch
Imagine being able to get rid of something in photo instantly... An ex, a bird, a cloud. TouchRetouch is a revolutionary app that enables you to get rid of unwanted content or objects from your photos! You literally use your finger to mark the items you want removed and hit ‘Go’. That’s all there is to it. I loooove this app. Why us it? Well, for example, I recently had an amazing landscape photo I wanted to post to Instagram but there was an ugly piece of trash on the ground. Using Touch ReTouch I removed it from the scene! It's kind of mind-boggling...
UBER EATS
This one is going to blow your mind and save you time, if you live in LA, NYC, Chicago or Toronto)! Use Uber already? Well look over on the right-handside of the options (Pool, UberX, Plus, Black, SUV, Lux) and you'll see Uber EATS! Everyday they offer a menu of items based on your location. I ordered lunch and it was at my doorstep 9 minutes later! The options are basic for those where I am (LA's Arts District) but the food is great and I hear that depending on your exact location there is way more choice. This is a lifesaver for people who are too busy (or are quite simply lazy) to go out for a meal, make lunch or wait for delivery times of an hour.
Sunny days are here again! Students are out of school, so we say summer is here. Although LA is pretty warm even in the winter, we're not ashamed to admit Summer is our favorite time of year at the office. There's something magical about the bright hues and longer days; something that makes you want to travel, explore, go on adventures, and wander outside in nature.
We've rounded-up our favorite photographs that remind us of that joyous, carefree, colorful feeling! These photographs are sure to brighten your home all-year-long - the hard part will be picking your favorite! Click the photos to go to the photographer's website so you can buy these beauties for yourself. Adorn your walls with one of these and you'll have hot times year-round...
WOW! A HUGE thank you to EVERYONE for making our 7th Annual Unique LA Spring Market SO awesome!! We are SO blown away by ALL of the amazing people our shows bring together!
Some special highlights of this show included our first time food court area with food vendors in 10 x 10 booths with communal seating & tables by Yeah! Rentals , Free flowers on Mother's Day by Bloomnation, FREE shipping up to $25 from Shyp and DIY section with wooden beads and free UNIQUE LA tattoos from Goldink Tattoo! A big shout out to Studio Mucci for our RAD balloons and decor and Oh Snap! photos for our Photo Booth! Design inspiration for this year's market was Saved by the Bell!!
And of course thank you GT's Kombucha, Bundaberg Ginger Beer, Luna Bars and Dripp coffee!!
Enjoy some of our photos from the show! We LOVED seeing all of your photos with #UniqueLa!!
Of course no show is complete without a visit from our loyal customer J.J. Abrams!!
We are excited to share a special perk for our unique shoppers that we've been working on... Our friends at Shyp are offering on-demand shipping to remove the hassle of carrying bulky items while shopping at the Unique LA Spring Market, or to make it easy to send gifts to your loved ones! Shyp will provide a $25 promotional code for each person to cover shipping costs for items that they purchase during the event! Shyp will be sending your items on the spot to anywhere you choose. Look for the Shyp shipping center at the event, marked in the printed booklet available at the event.
In case you aren’t familiar, Shyp makes it easy to ship anything, anywhere; no boxes, no tape, no post office. Just launch the Shyp app, take a picture of your item, enter the destination, and Shyp comes to you within 25 minutes to take care of packing and sending it on your behalf. All this for just $5, plus the cost of shipping, which Shyp price compares to make sure you pay the cheapest rate. Shyp also recently launched a product dedicated to returning things you buy online. Available on both Android and iOS, be sure to check out this app on Thursday!
Discover great independent designers and artists, support your local economy, and take part in community. We make it easy to shop small and have a blast while supporting the city you love! Meet and shop from the actual designers and artists, selling everything from jewelry to home decor and furniture, stationery to men's leather goods!
