My Market Scout is a platform built to support market organizers and vendors across Canada.
Learn more about it in the FAQs below and if you have further questions, ideas for future tools or would like to chat about anything market related please don’t hesitate to reach out!
My Market Scout was founded by Isabel Kessi, an experienced market manager with a passion for supporting local entrepreneurs and strengthening community connections. After years of organizing successful markets and participating as a casual vendor, Isabel saw firsthand the need for a comprehensive platform to better serve both market organizers and vendors, help save time on both sides and make it easier to find good markets and vendors. Driven by this mission, Isabel launched My Market Scout in 2024 with the goal of empowering the local market ecosystem across Canada.
The inspiration for My Market Scout stemmed from Isabel’s own experience in managing markets and connecting with the right vendors at the right time. She recognized that market organizers often struggled with cumbersome vendor recruitment and communication processes, while vendors faced difficulties discovering relevant market opportunities, navigating scams, scheduling vending opportunities ahead of time and maximizing their sales. The most common way to find markets/vendors has been social media, especially market specific groups. However the information found on facebook is oftentimes outdated, not seen in time, doesn’t reach the right audience and the increase of scam posts and ads makes it hard to navigate.
By creating a centralized, industry-specific platform, Isabel aims to streamline these pain points and foster greater collaboration between organizers and vendors. Her hope is to not only make market participation easier, but to help local businesses thrive and build stronger communities.
At the heart of My Market Scout is a deep commitment to our customers – both market organizers and vendors. We understand the hard work, passion, and challenges that come with running successful community markets and growing local businesses.
That’s why we’re dedicated to continually enhancing our platform, developing valuable resources, tools and features, and nurturing a supportive community. Our goal is to empower you to reach new heights of market success.
My Market Scout provides a centralized platform to streamline your market operations and vendor management. The market profiles and directory allows you to more effectively promote your event, attract the ideal vendor mix, and deliver an exceptional experience for your attendees. The vendor directory can be used to select vendors and directly invite them to join your event.
The goal is to reduce your workload of scanning through countless vendor applications that don’t meet what you’re looking for. The additional benefits are on the one hand that your market profile shows credibility, vendors can trust that no scammers have access to the platform and the information provided is truthful. On the other hand a market profile is a fantastic customer service tool. By providing all the necessary information a vendor needs to know before applying it reduces barriers and shows that you care about the vendors success.
The comprehensive market profile gives you the opportunity to clearly communicate what kind of vendors your are looking for while also painting a detailed picture of the market, it’s shopper demographic and vendor amenities and requirements.
Through the vendor directory, you can easily browse profiles and directly invite the vendors that you’re interested in. This is especially helpful if you’re looking to fill certain categories.
At the moment we are focused on making connection between vendors and organizers easier and less time-consuming.
Future tools are things like an data collection tool to measure vendor satisfaction, and real-time communication tool to share last minute notes.
We are working to integrate with the most common market management software soon!
The integration will enable you to seamlessly connect your existing systems and workflows with the My Market Scout tool set, creating a consolidated and efficient operational experience.
Our platform makes it easy for vendors to browse upcoming market events, review all the information you need before applying to a market to make sure it’s a good match.
In the vendor profile you can promote your business and share when and where you’re looking to attend community markets. This allows markets to view your profile and invite you to join their market if they think it would be a good fit.
A future tool is a personalized market calendar you will be able to track your submission status, receive notifications about deadlines, and plan your optimal market schedule – all in one centralized location.
The vendor profile is an opportunity to promote your business. Share your story, your products, upload photos and link social media accounts and websites.
You can also select where and when you’re interested to attend markets. This will then allow market organizers to directly invite you to join their event.
At the moment it is completely free for vendors to join the platform and set up a vendor profile.
Paid subscription tiers are in the works and they will offer more features to help you make the market planning and application process much more efficient so you have more time to work in your business.