Not Your Parents Flea Market

I remember being a kid and dragged to flea markets by my mom, very much against my will. Aside from the normal not wanting to spend a Saturday shopping, I hated being taken to these markets that never seemed to have anything worth value, run by people who did not seem to have any business savvy. I never felt very comfortable at these markets, and would much rather have gone to a real, big-box store to get the things we needed around the house. Being reintroduced to flea markets as an adult, I expected to be greeted with the same type of booths and the same kind of people. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My reintroduction to flea markets came through Swap-O-Rama, markets located in the Chicago region of Illinois. As the host and producer of a podcast, I was given the opportunity to interview some of their operations people to discuss the markets and the services they provide to their communities. Though I had been told that these markets were nothing like the markets of the past, I wasn’t holding out much hope. It was early into the interview that I realized; these markets were nothing like what I knew as a child. These markets were much more sophisticated.

The gentlemen I interviewed, Ted Joseph and Justin Joseph, a father and son team, immediately proved to be quite business savvy and very serious about changing the way people got their needs met in the communities they served. We discussed how the markets provide a resource for people in a way they can better afford, how they create hundreds of entrepreneurs and how they employ people in the communities the markets serve. Over time, I’ve also learned about how markets see their social responsibility and why people matter so much to them. In short, I learned that flea markets are vital to the communities they are in.

In a world where things seem to change daily, and where we’ve been forced to decide what is truly important to us, we’ve also been forced to rethink the way we shop. For many people, this means they do much more of their shopping online. While there is a good reason to consider online shopping, there are just as many good reasons to consider going to your local flea market. When you shop at a flea market you are supporting local, and mostly small, businesses. You are pouring resources back into your community and helping the mission of flea markets go further. Perhaps one of the best aspects of flea market shopping is that you get to know the people who are creating and offering the products. You get to learn about why they do what they do, what it means to them, and how hard they’ve worked to get to where they are. You get to hear their story.

While many of us are directed by routine, one of life’s true comforts, I would challenge you to break your routine and try shopping at your local flea market. I think you’ll find people who care about what they do, quality products that do the job, and a variety of useful products all in one place. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet so many people in the flea market industry, and hope that you take a chance to go meet them as well.

Nathan M. Ciulla