I joined a flea market!

22 September 2018

Early September, a friend of mine buzzed me if I wanted to help her to sell her clothes in a flea market. Now, it has always been my dream to sell my stuff in a flea market. I am not referring to clothes because I don't have much clothes here. I have limited working clothes and I have countable party clothes. I am not even sure if they are categorised as party clothes at all. Well, for me, being minimal is key. When I moved to Sweden, I had to clear lots of my stuff and I realised how hard it was to clear them because of the memories attached to them. So, I decided to have as little stuff as possible in Sweden. 

I digress.

I agreed to my friend's suggestion to participate in the flea market, but I wanted to sell too. And I wanted to sell my baking! I made 'onde-onde' and Swedish apple cakes. If you are a Malaysian, you know what is onde-onde. Otherwise, it is boiled glutinous rice ball filled with palm sugar and rolled in steamed desiccated coconut. It is my all-time favourite delicacy back home. And when I found out how easy it was to make them, I have been making them most of the time when required. I made them the morning of the flea market which means waking up really early.

I baked Swedish apple cakes because I have been getting pretty good at them. Like seriously. Those who tasted it agreed to it. I baked the cakes the night before. Baked 2 of them because I was not sure if any of them will sell. I halved each cake and so I had 4 pieces of the cakes.

We participated in a flea market located in Karlaplan. I brought a foldable table. Each spot costs SEK250 / RM125. It was a windy morning. I froze most of the time. The flea market was open from 11am till 3pm. 

And guess what? I had 3 customers! I managed to sell one of my apple cakes. And 10 pieces of onde-onde. I realised how difficult it was to sell food, especially food foreign to Swedes. The ones who bought my onde-onde are foreigners and they mentioned that they would love to try something new. 

I was pretty happy with my sales although I ended up with a net loss. Haha! I could not cover the cost of my ingredients and my rented spot. It was a net loss of SEK31 / RM15. 

I am pleased with myself that I did this!