Woodlawn Street Market highlights vitality of local small business community

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Birmingham AL
The Woodlawn Street Market filled the 55th Place block between 1st AVE N and 1st AVE S, and spilled over into the adjacent parking lot.

On Saturday, April 1, Birmingham and area residents interacted with a wide variety of vendors, offering anything from fresh produce to henna designs, and clothing to snoballs.  A DJ kept the music going for the six-hour event.

Woodlawn Street Market began back in 2014, when a few dozen startups shared their products with shoppers at the first Woodlawn Street Market. Bekah Fox, Communicating Vessels Artist and Brian Gunn, REV Birmingham District Lead work extra hard to put together this quarterly event.

Birmingham AL
Woodlawn students selling produce from their school farm, which is part of a group of Jones Valley Teaching Farms
Birmingham AL
Erin Melaney Bodden of Erin Melaney Designs.

Now in its third year, the first Woodlawn Street Market of 2017 featured nearly 100 small businesses, the biggest market to date.  More than thirty of them are new to the Woodlawn Street Market. The street marketplace gives small business owners some real world experience to test their products, meet new customers and gain valuable feedback.

Birmingham AL
David and Wani Shaw serving up some of their sweet treats

Wani and David Shaw, owners of Magic City Sweet Ice, graduated from CO.STARTERS, a small business development program of Create Birmingham that REV is proud to partner on.  There are several graduates of the REV CO.STARTERS program attending the market to test and perfect their concepts before settling into a brick and mortar location. REV’s goal is to build sustainable businesses that can fill vacant spaces in commercials districts, making them vibrant again.

Birmingham AL
Le Tour de Ham, lead by Daniel Webb, added a stop at the market to their Saturday morning roll around town.

Several vendors have moved into brick and mortar locations since they started participating in Woodlawn Street Market, including Magic City Ice and Domestique Coffee.

Birmingham AL
Audrey Word-Daniels of Diva’s Boutique

If you have a business concept you’d like to develop, start by connecting with REV’s Director of Business Growth, Deon Gordon at deon@revbirmingham.org. For information about the Woodlawn Street Market, email District Coordinator, Brian Gunn at bgunn@revbirmingham.org.

Birmingham AL
A political street theater’s town crier invited all market-goers to an upcoming town hall meeting with their U.S. Senators.
Birmingham AL
Woodlawn Community and Oak Ridge Park president, Myeisha Hutchinson, in front of 55th Place Thrift. The thrift store reports up to a 400% increase in their sales on Woodlawn Street Market days!
Birmingham AL
A tiny market visitor enjoys a child-sized Magic City Ice.
Birmingham AL
Sarah Scott with her original paintings
Birmingham AL
Dogs and their people were equally pleased by the warm weather.

The next Woodlawn Street Market will be held on Saturday, June 3rd! 

Kristina O'Quinn
Kristina O'Quinn
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