🎯 The business: a curated retail niche (vintage denim, kids’ clothes, candles, local goods, whatever you have taste in) sold at markets, pop-ups and online for a season, and only then, if the numbers say so, in a storefront with a lease. Prove the niche for $5,800 before you sign for $40,000.

Market shoppers, Instagram followers who become repeat buyers, and gift seekers in November and December. Retail margins run 50 to 65 percent on goods you buy wholesale, more on vintage you source yourself. The holiday quarter is often a third of the year’s sales.

Pick a niche narrow enough to describe in four words. Open wholesale accounts (Faire makes this easy for small shops) or source your first vintage lot. Book six markets and photograph the booth like a store window. Put every buyer on a text or email list; the list is the asset that moves with you to the storefront.

A market Saturday that sells $1,200 of goods at a 55 percent margin leaves about $660 before the $100 fee. Three markets a month plus online orders is a $3,000 to $5,000 a month side business, and the numbers tell you which items and which neighborhoods work. A storefront needs about $12,000 to $20,000 a month in sales to carry a modest lease and one employee; your market data tells you whether that is realistic.

A seller’s permit and sales tax collection, a business license, the market’s insurance requirement, and for the storefront a certificate of occupancy and sign permit. Some goods (cosmetics, kids’ products, food) have labeling and safety rules of their own.

Buying what you love instead of what sells, which is why the season of data matters. Inventory that ties up cash in a back room. A lease signed on a good December. The owners who last read the market numbers coldly and let the customer list decide the next step.