This summer there will be a new opportunity for vendors, residents, and the entire community of Innisfil with the launch of the Innisfil Fashion Market.
Throughout the summer vendors will gather outside the Stroud Innisfil Community Centre to sell new and pre-loved clothes, shoes, accessories, home decor, and more for great prices.
The Innisfil Fashion Market will take place on various Saturdays from June to October with the initial event set for June 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“This is the first market of its kind in the Innisfil-Barrie area,” said Georgia Allison, co-ordinator for the event. “It’s an event for all locals to come together and book a stall and sell their pre-loved wardrobe wares. It’s also an opportunity for local businesses to come sell their things as well. This event is really about fusing the new and old together — everyone is selling, getting rid of their old items while other businesses can be selling new items.”
Allison hails from Australia, where markets like this are the norm, which inspired her to go out and create her own for Innisfil and surrounding areas.
“This is something that happens quite often there (in Australia),” she said. “I came here wanting to find something similar in the summer and I realized there was nothing like that here. So, I was like, ‘I may as well just be the first.’ It’s commonly known as a ‘rack sale’ in Australia, where it’s a market that’s dedicated to people selling their clothes and it’s just a fun day out on the weekend. That’s what we want to create here.”
What started as an idea for a market quickly became a reality for Allison, who used social media to help the idea blow up, with the inaugural Saturday already having over 50 confirmed vendors.
“I’m a social media marketer by trade and social media influencer, so it was already easy in terms of getting the word out,” she said. “Once we found our footing through Instagram marketing it snowballed on its own with the word out there. Thanks to social media advertising, we filled out our vendors for our first event within 48 hours. It became a very exciting event very quickly and everyone is super stoked for it.”
Using social media has been the best resource for the Innisfil Fashion Market team and has allowed them to reach not just the residents of Innisfil but across to other communities to help drive more people to the town.
“Social media is the backbone to any business, any startup company, and any event,” Allison said. “It’s the pinnacle tool that’s needed to get the word out there. Funnily enough, I was planning to keep this low-key and make a Facebook page but the second I created the Instagram page, it went off. When there’s a local event, everyone wants to know about it especially as we come fresh out of winter. Everyone is looking for something to do, something that’s fresh and new and exciting. That’s why we’re really keen to bring this to the community.”
The excitement is already building for the market as a way for sellers to kick the summer off and the residents to get back out in the warm weather, especially with it being a new kind of market that the community hasn’t really seen before.
“We have received so much great feedback and it’s only been a week,” Allison says. “It’s great confirmation that this was an 'aha moment' for us—it feels like we’re sitting on a gold mine. I even had locals call me to say how excited they are and tell us how amazing the idea was, it was so cool. Local vendors have also expressed that they’re tired of the older market ideas that happen in every town and they’re very excited to enter a fresh take on the market industry because so many of us rely on markets and bringing in a fresh perspective in a way that’s really about encompassing a new vibe for the summer. People are ecstatic.”
Originally the Innisfil Summer Market was just supposed to be on one Saturday in June, but the increased interest has led to more dates for Saturdays on July 9, Aug. 6, Sept. 3, and Oct. 8.
“We hadn’t planned to do more events for the year, it wasn’t until I was receiving one to two massages a day last week asking me if there’s going to be more because they want to plan their summers around it,” said Allison. “We’ve been waiting to do something like this, and I love to create where creation is needed. It’s under our umbrella company ‘the Collection’ which is about gathering, and events and we plan on streamlining it to have our own coffee trailers and bar trailers for weddings, functions, and our markets. This has really lit that fire for our company and we’re super excited about it.”
Check out the Innisfil Fashion Market website here and their Instagram here.
