We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mac Wallace a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mac , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
When the pandemic originally hit, small business owners suffered a big loss. I, among hundreds of thousands of others like me, depended on vendor markets to make money. Without those markets, we were all just sitting on inventory and waiting for things to get back to “normal” so we could start traveling and chasing our dreams again. While my determination never left, my frustration around this matter began to grow.
One day, I looked at my room filled with event inventory and decided to put it all in my front yard and call it a “Punk Rock Yard Sale”. I drew up signs listing items I would be selling with my address on it and hung them around my neighborhood. I slapped a post on social media, sat outside with a mask on, and hoped people would show.
Friends who saw my post and a ton of neighbors came over to see what was going on. Some people were completely turned off. It was indeed not your every day, conventional yard sale. On that day, I got to see friends I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic, met new neighbors, sold a ton of stuff, and felt something I had not felt in so long: Community.
I had friends ask if they could set up a table at my next yard sale and I said, “Sure!”. We ended up doing about 3 of these yard sales, now with other vendors selling their stuff and decided to move it into my back yard and get some bands to perform. And that’s when the Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market was born.
What started out as a covid-inspired Punk Rock Yard Sale in my back yard slowly started to turn into something bigger. I had a ton of positive feedback after the event and started hearing things like, “When is the next one?”.
I became extremely motivated to try and find a space where we could have more vendors, more bands, and an opportunity to invite more people into our creative space.
The punk rock flea market is a nationally and internationally recognized event organized by individuals residing in the city they host their events in. They are spaces created to influence community growth and small business support. From ones I have attended in the southeastern and southern region, they all have a unique aspect to them that help represent their city and local talent. And they all come with risks.
The risk I took with organizing my first punk rock flea market in Nashville was my time, my own money, and my resources to make my vision come to life for my local community. I had to look at it as something bigger than what I could do for myself, and what I could instead do the performing bands, the vendors, the venue, and the patrons. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I was excited nonetheless. I luckily had two friends (Rip and Emily) willing to take on responsibility of managing the local talent and shooting the photography and creating the graphics so that freed me up to take on curating the vendors, negotiating the deal with the venue, and mapping out and plotting vendor spaces.
I had always set out to make these events free to the public at all ages venues in support of non-profit organizations. Needless to say, our budget was little to nothing because we had no revenue coming in from things like ticket sales to help pay for the venue. I relied on the vendor booth fees and merchandise that could or could not potentially sell. I took the risk of believing in the success of an event that I had never done to this scale.
Once we had the flyer made and announced the event in support of Toys for Tots with only one month to promote at a place that was new to Nashville at the time (Eastside Bowl), things started moving pretty fast. And so did the incoming emails. The announcement of the first punk rock flea market in Nashville was very fast to gain the attention of some seriously amazing local artists. I depended on the vendors and performing bands to help promote the event and toy drive. And they did an incredible job doing so.
When the doors to my one-day event opened, the line was already out the door. I was completely taken back at the curiosity and excitement of the people in attendance with new toys in their hands to donate. I still get chills thinking about it.
The day was so much fun. We ended up with close to 10 contractor bags filled with toys to donate to our non profit friends, tons of positive feedback, tons of attention and revenue to the brand new bowling alley, and around 1,450 total in attendance. I also sold all the merch I made and was able to pay the bands, the venue, and my team.
If I learned anything from the risks I took unintentionally developing and growing this concept for Nashville, I learned that I would risk it all over again and again if it means I can give the people in the city I grew up in a space to feel free and at home in.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Mac. I am a native Nashvillian, single mother of two kids, the proud small business owner of All Hallows LLC, and the promoter and organizer of the Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market.
Since 2017, I have been paving a far-from-straight path of where I see my business going. It has had multiple twists and turns, ups and downs and dead end roads but each time I hit a dead end, I end up somewhere new. Bent but not broken.
Since the beginning of the punk rock yard sale, I did not see it as anything more than just getting people together and calling up my friends who were in bands to come and play a house show. I realized afterwards that I unintentionally became a show promoter.
After the success of the first Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market, I had friends reach out to me to see if I could help get them booked to play at local clubs. I saw the potential of the places I could take my company and realized that it was more than just a clothing brand, but a pipeline to help bands get more fans, help small businesses grow, and started to build more bridges with neighboring cities and various non-profits to overall strengthen and unite our scene.
I think at each show that I organize, everyone can see my intentions. I think that’s what sets my markets apart from other Nashville markets. They can see that I want to provide the best experience possible and do whatever it takes to get everyone in the same room. I try to come up with new ideas that will generate making memories with friends. I strive to keep activities free for everyone to enjoy including things like a free photo booth with printouts to take home. I encourage families to bring their kids. I make my events free so any kid, adult, the bored, the broke, the lost, etc. can come and find their people and discover or uncover things about themselves they didn’t know they had or felt before. These events are a part of me and a part of my little punk rock heart.
I have gotten extremely lucky to have been connected to the best people. These connections continue to grow as this event grows and this is only the beginning of a new path. I owe my success to everyone who has ever attended one of these events, purchased a shirt, shared the event on social media, brought their friends, sponsored the event, volunteered the event, vended at the event, given me a chance as an event partner, and so on. Because my success is everyone’s success. This is not my event, it’s ours.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
I funded my business on a dwindling personal savings account. I was too broke to take out a business loan and relied on blind trust that I knew or believed anything I was doing. If I could sum up my initial capital on my business in three professional words, I would use the words, “Careless yet hopeful”.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
My near death moment for the Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market is summarized simply as: Further Farms.
I had not even successfully launched the first winter punk flea market at Eastside Bowl before Rip (partner) and I decided to book our summer event at Further Farms. We thought it best to keep the momentum up and having a second date announcement after our first flea market while everyone was still excited would be a smart move. And it was!
We had big plans. He had connections to big bands that we were getting the green light from, I was working on the venue negotiation, and we were working with about an $8 budget so needless to say, everything was going great!
When you are a small fish in a large and unfamiliar pond, everything can seem sort of imaginary or at least bigger than you can comprehend. I spent countless hours on that farm leading up to the event, carefully calculating every move like I could predict everything that would happen. I tested the wifi signal. Alone and in a big field. I did not consider what it would mean to have upwards of one thousand or more people in the field trying to bum the same signal. I had locations of trash receptacles and no hired or volunteered helpers to keep watch of overflowing trash. I had half a pallet of cans of Liquid Death to give away for thirsty summer patrons that diminished an hour into the event. I had big bands that I was paying from this imaginary budget that, fingers crossed, event merchandise sales would cover. Basically, I had an event that was too successful for what I was capable of providing for.
I think the hardest lesson I had to learn from that experience was that it not only almost killed my business, but it almost killed me too. Because at the end of the day, the responsibility of making sure everything was squared up with and cleaned up was on me and my business.
I got through that market by the skin of my teeth and I am grateful of the performance of the growing event that I was able to pay the performing bands the money they all deserved. I was grateful that the vendors did not turn their backs on me due to the frustration of the potential loss in business sales due to the lack of internet access for online payment methods. I was grateful that we all made it out alive.
I would one hundred percent go back to Further Farms but I would do things completely different. I would keep within an ACTUAL budge. I would actively plan to have more helpers. And I would never take on more than I think me or anyone helping me could handle.
Contact Info:
- Website: nashvillepunk.net
- Instagram: @punkrockfleamarket_nashville
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Nashville-Punk-Rock-Flea-Market/100076297182218/
- Youtube: @allhallowsllc
Image Credits
Majestic Photo Booth Emily Chavarie