“We want to change the face of retail for the better, and encourage more people to shop small more often.”

- Daisy and Liv Tinker

For the uninitiated, Salad Days Market (formerly known as A South London Makers Market) is a curated makers market that pops up in different venues around South London, created with one aim: to help more people than ever shop small!

Inspired by their love of rummaging through markets and car boot sales, and wanting to find a way to support the incredible small businesses they had discovered in South London, in December 2019 Daisy and Liv Tinker hosted their first-ever market in Crystal Palace. After 500 people turned up, they knew they’d accidentally stumbled into something amazing. That day sparked something inside both of them, and they’ve been driven forward by that passion ever since! 

On a mission to overhaul the traditional market offering, Salad Days Market is known for its incredible curation, friendly community and bustling vibe, with people queuing down the street to get in when it opens! As such, big names in the retail sphere have been keen to collaborate, and Salad Days has had pop-ups at Selfridges, The Hoxton and Gipsy Hill Brewery. Fifty events, one award and 1000 small businesses later, Salad Days is now a much-loved event in South London!

Tell us about your business, how did you come up with the idea or concept? 

We came up with the idea to run a market really by accident! Daisy had just moved to Crystal Palace and noticed an advert to rent an event space in her local library. She’d been looking for ways to get involved with her local community, and had the idea to bring together all the amazingly talented creative people we knew to put on a makers market! We only ever intended for it to be a one-off event, but now more than 50 markets and three years later we’re still here!

What are your brand values and what is your ethos? 

We run the business with the ethos to be the change we want to see. We want to change the face of retail for the better, and encourage more people to shop small more often. We want to put on events in our community that help people enjoy life and live their salad days. It was this idea, which inspired us to change the name of the market to Salad Days!

Were there any obstacles you faced whilst creating and growing your business, if so how did you overcome them? 

Neither Daisy nor I had ever run events before! We’d never run our own business. So some of the challenges we’ve faced have been learning how to do things like employing an accountant and organising our finances. We overcame these by getting a personal recommendation for an accountant from someone we really trust, and his advice and help has been invaluable. Shout out to Kevin! When Covid hit in March 2020, we had lots of real life events booked in that could no longer go ahead, so working out a way to make the whole thing digital was quite a challenge, but one we enjoyed and learnt a lot from too. I think overcoming this huge obstacle early on in our business really gave us the confidence to know we could succeed and looking back it was a blessing in disguise as it taught us the importance of being flexible and agile.

Did you have a mentor or support structure in place when you founded it?

We’ve never had a mentor, but my boyfriend's stepdad Gabriel, who runs his own lucrative business, really inspired me to believe we could be successful when we first set up our business. Right at the beginning he gave me an hour-long motivational speech, I was crying by the end of it! That talk just gave me a feeling of inner confidence. It’s amazing how people have the power to inspire others like that. It’s something we try to emulate when we give our Sales Power Hour call to stallholders taking part in our market, because we know just how important believing in yourself is to be successful in business.

What’s been the most rewarding moment of your journey as a founder?

The most rewarding part of our journey as founders so far has been connecting with an incredible creative community of kind and like-minded people across the country, but most importantly in our own local communities. It’s amazing how much of a positive impact that has had on us personally and is the thing we love most about running the business.

What’s been the biggest lesson – about yourself, your abilities or just general life lessons – you’ve learnt since starting your business? 

The biggest lesson we’ve learnt in the last three years is that running a business is essentially just overcoming a series of challenges, and learning how to problem solve, so learning how to be confident in yourself is one of the most important attributes to have. Having confidence in yourself means that when things don’t work out, you’ll have the courage to pick yourself back up and try again. Don’t spend too long learning about business, instead, I would recommend learning how to be confident! Set yourself new challenges and be consistent in achieving them, and notice how your self-confidence will soar. When you have confidence, you have the ability to face any challenge, and that’s how you’ll achieve your dreams!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice we’ve ever received is how to deal with failure. While it’s important to review and assess how you could have done something differently or better, don’t waste energy trying to change the past or ruminating on something that’s already happened, instead use that energy to drive you forward to the next challenge or project.

How do you find the work-life balance? What strategies and routines do you have in place to cope with the work-life balance? If you worked for someone else previously, how does it compare?

Work-life balance is something we’re still working on, even in our 4th year of running the business! Daisy created an incredibly comprehensive calendar spreadsheet for us to use, which really helps us manage our time effectively, and we also try to work intuitively. So if one day we’re feeling run down or tired, we rest and work at other times of day or night when we feel more energised. This can lead to some unusual working hours, so in that sense, it’s less predictable than regular employment, but also means we can be more flexible. We don’t allocate ourselves set holiday and instead allow ourselves to take time off whenever we want to (or can!) Our ultimate goal is to work 4 days a week but the nature of running events means we eb-and-flow depending on what we have on. It’s helped us to think of ourselves as each other’s manager, and consider how we would want to be kind and caring managers to each other. We don’t want to be mean managers!

Would you recommend any resources that have been useful for you when starting/running your business?

We’ve found a few books to be helpful. Mary Portas: Rebuild, How To Thrive In The New Kindness Economy. Retail Recovery by Mark Pilkington. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. 

What would be your advice to anyone wanting to start their own business?

The one piece of advice I would give anyone starting their own business is just to really consider whose advice you listen to. Try to spend time in the company of confident or successful people and learn as much as you can about how they approach things, and their attitudes to business. If someone is trying to share their opinion about something you’re doing, first consider the source. Is this person successful, happy, and working in a similar field to you, have they ever run their own business? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then they may not be best placed to share knowledge with you. When you first start out, you will be surprised who supports you and who doesn’t! Lots of people will want to tell you all the reasons your idea might not work, but if they themselves have never achieved anything you dream of, take their opinion with a pinch of salt and trust your gut instead. You’ve got everything you need inside of you to succeed, and anything you don’t you can learn along the way!

What do you love about London?

I love London because I feel like anything can happen here. This is a city for making dreams come true. London is alive and constantly changing. The language, the architecture, the people. Nothing here is static, nothing here is precious, and everything will change! It’s a city in a constant state of flux and that makes it a really thrilling place to be. 

What is next for Salad Days Market?

We’ve got so much coming up! With our new name and brand, we’ve finally found the essence of what we want the business to be about which is spreading joy and helping people live their Salad Days! We can’t wait to put on more events this year that help people do just that. 

Salad Days Market have a Samples, Seconds and Sale Bonanza on Saturday 25 February 2023 and Sunday 26 February 2023. Click here for more information and to book your free ticket.  

Website: saladdaysmarket.co.uk

Instagram: @saladdaysmarket