By Times Team
Copyright times
By Times’ Junior Journalist Pia Grover
East Auckland’s busy and unique Howick Village Market is held every Saturday from 8am to 12.30pm and I was fortunate enough to meet the market manager, Rachel Johnson.
I couldn’t let go of the opportunity to understand our very own local market, so read on to follow the journey.
What is this Howick Village Market for?
“This market is for our local community to come in and buy locally-crafted and -produced goods in an open market environment.
“It has live music for entertainment and a sit-and-stay habitat, which is great for all our customers, or even just people who want to chill on a Saturday morning.”
Around how many stallholders are there and is it the same stalls every week?
“There are 55 to 60 stallholders each week. We have a mixture of different stalls each week.
“We have some of our stallholders who are here every single week. For example, Ray, who makes hand-made leather belts.
“He’s been here since the start of the market, every Saturday. To keep the market fresh and vibrant, we have new stallholders’ requests coming in all the time, some monthly and some on a casual basis.”
What’s the busiest time on Saturday mornings?
“Our busiest time is from 10am. That’s when people start to come in and browse, particularly as they’re buying things like fresh produce.
“A lot of our fresh produce gets sold out by 10.30am and that includes our organic vegetables, fresh salads, fresh fruit and micro-greens.
“At 12.30pm some stores are still busy selling, and they have a mixture of regular customers that come in every week and buy exactly the same products.”
Do you have a team? How do you operate?
The Howick Village Association is a team of three and we’re all part-timers. The village manager is Katie Treneman and the events manager is Jane Newbury, who puts on things like the Village Hop. I run the Howick Village Market.”
What’s the biggest challenge for you when running the Howick Village Market?
“The biggest challenge is the limitation we have on the size and space in the market.
“Making sure the flow works and working with the stall owners and making sure they’re happy with the placement of their stalls.
“Another big challenge is when we either get weather-dependent cancellations or have to re-do and change things around based on a cancellation.”
After our chat, Rachel took me and my mum on a walk around the market. We met several wonderful business owners.
The business owners are as young as 13 years old.
It was incredible to see each stallholder selling such unique and diverse hand-crafted merchandise at such exceptional prices, and to hear a couple of stallholders’ incredibly bizarre backstories from Rachel.
Some of the most unique and striking backstories that caught my attention I’ll share in the next edition.
Well, if you haven’t been to the market in a while, don’t miss out the chance this coming Saturday! Happy shopping!
Pia Grover is in year 8
