What is Issimo Markets?
Issimo Markets is a platform that makes markets simple. It is a community of market managers, stallholders, and visitors who believe that we can do more together than we can apart. It’s the easiest way to find, run, and grow markets.
Does Issimo run any markets?
Nope! Our role is to provide great tools and support to make life simple for anyone who wants to run or attend a market, to get more visitors to markets, and to promote how great markets are in general for our communities.
Who sets the rules for how a market operates?
The markets do, since they own, operate, and manage them. But within that structure, software can certainly help. Issimo Markets lets everyone know exactly what the deal is, feeds updates as soon as something changes, provides great dashboards, and generally automates as much as we possibly can so everyone can get on with it and do what they do best.
Can I choose who attends my market?
Of course! It's your market and we know that stallholder curation is a vital part of running it. We aim to make it easy for stallholders to apply, reusing as much of their information as possible each time, and easy for you to accept or decline with just a click. Whatever the outcome, we let stallholders know quickly so that they can continue planning their upcoming dates.
How do I as a Market Manager get paid?
We use a service called Stripe to process credit/debit card payments.
Issimo asks you how far ahead of each date you'd like to receive payment. Staggering the payment dates like this means stallholders can manage their cash flow more easily rather than having to make one big payment, but allows both you and and the stallholder to plan on attendance and payment details far in advance. Once approved and closer to the date, the stallholder's payment is charged and deposited into your Stripe account. Your Stripe then automatically makes a deposit into your bank account every day/week/month, depending on your Stripe settings.
You can also choose to use bank transfers or cash on the day, however we find that managers quickly switch once they experience how much time they save.
Do my regulars have to apply each time?
Issimo Markets is set up so stallholders can apply for an entire year of their regular markets, and then managers approve the dates that work. However, markets can also send email invitations to any stallholder regulars as a reminder to confirm attendance.
We also have in beta testing the ability to simply mark a stallholder as attending on their behalf, and the ability for stallholders to toggle on and off authority for the market to create new site charges, so that they don't have to take action every time they wish to attend. This model gives full control and information to both parties, while also proving to be quite convenient. If you'd like access to this feature early we'd be quite happy to include your market in the beta.
What happens if a stallholder cancels?
A stallholder has the power to cancel their booking up until they have paid in their dashboard. After payment, the stallholder must contact the market in order to make arrangements. Bookings can be moved to other dates or cancelled by the market manager. If the market chooses to refund the booking - refunds are processed through Stripe.
As a Market Manager, do stallholders see when we allocate a site?
No. We understand that allocations can change right up to the very day (and sometimes on the day!) so the allocation information is not visible by stallholders. A release is planned that will allow you to publish your site map to stallholders and visitors once it's ready for release.