Ainee’s Baazar children’s market

Ainee’s Baazar Children’s Market

Dear Mummy, what better way to spend a wet and miserable day than shopping! We’re not shopping in a shopping centre though but at a small independent children’s market in Basingstoke. It’s called Ainee’s Bazaar and with only a handful of events under its belt it is still very new on the Baby & Children’s market scene in Hampshire.

My mummy decided to give it a go. It’s always nice trying new sales as opposed to trying to shift items on eBay or Facebay. This is the first time in a long time that my mummy has been a seller. Clothes, shoes and toys have been stacking up for the past year and the house is bursting at the seams so it was ready for a clear out.

The car is packed and my mummy heads down to the sale room with one of her friends. It’s in Chineham Village Hall, Basingstoke just off the A33 towards Reading.

It’s raining as you unload the car and head indoors, luckily there is plenty of car parking spaces, as Chineham Village Hall has its own carpark. On entering the hall we are warmly greeted and handed an information letter, a free tea/coffee drinks voucher for two people and two stall holder badges. This is very professional my mummy thinks. We have a 6ft x 2ft table to sell on and plenty of space either side to set up a clothes rail. It cost us £12 to hire the 2 hours. Other sellers around us are friendly and chatty too and everyone is in a really good mood. We are allowed to set up a good 50 minutes before the doors open which is oodles of time to perfect our stall.

The sale opens at 1:30pm and it’s off to a slow start, not the mad rush we expected and have seen at other sales. It was only £1 to gain entry and kids got in for free! It’s a slow burner and before we know it the walkways are filling up at around 2pm, we think this is mainly due to the entertainment which is a sing-along and facepainting by the fabulous Ice Queen on the small hall stage. Lots of children dressed up as characters from Frozen queued along the walkway in front of our stand, which brought more business to the table, we make a lot of sales and this is our busiest period. The Ice Queen entertainer is very convincing and she plays a multitude of different characters on her website Ellen’s Kingdom. She looks good and really engages with the young children. We can see why people came to see her!

On reflection it’s funny that the items my mummy thought would sell, didn’t. Like the MegaBlocks, all the Start-Rite shoes and sensory books. But my mummy thinks this is due to the lack of parents there with younger children and pregnant visitors. On this occasion it seemed there were a lot of older children with parents that wouldn’t be interested in the baby stuff. Even though it is the end of the month and payday, it’s a bad time of the year to be a seller in the transition months after Christmas. We would be interested to try this sale again later in the year.

The crowds dwindle and before we know it’s time to pack up and go home. We broke even which was good so it wasn’t a wasted trip, and my mummy had enough to buy a cute rainbow rainmac from another seller. It was nice to get out of the house for a couple of hours and chat to friends and other stall holders.

We came across so many great little craft stands there too, like Loopy Needles a who make cute home items and housewares. We particularly loved the easter inspired chick hats and egg cup tea cosies. We were very impressed with her stand and attention to detail.

The lovely Lyverji Crafts whose quirky button balloon artwork caught my mummy’s eye.

Another stand which attracted a crowd was SmallPrint, the original ‘direct contact’ silver keepsake company, who had some lovely silver pieces displayed on her stand.

My mummy was tempted by the pop-up the tea room at Ainee’s Bazaar provided by Impish Delights, but didn’t have any cake sadly as she was on Lent, however the cakes looked scrummy and the tea room was a fabulous idea!

The quality of the items on sale were in good to mint condition and reasonably priced, you can tell that the sellers at Ainee’s Bazaar had taken time to display and present their goods to buyers.

If you’re looking for a great afternoon out with the family where you can enjoy afternoon tea, entertainment, buy pre-loved baby and children’s items and purchase from local crafters then this is the one stop shopping experience for you. Hopefully the more promotion they get, the more it will draw in the crowds for the sellers. Ainee’s Bazaar has only been going for a couple of weeks and we predict great things from them. Watch this space Ainee’s Bazaar Baby and Children’s Market could offer some serious competition to other children markets in the area.