Shop update & Nini Mart’s first business trip!
Hi everyone! Welcome to my first blog post on Nini Mart! I hope the first months of 2025 has treated you well. At Nini Mart, I took a sort of “break” from January to February - these winter months post-December always feel like a limbo or intermission to me (anyone else feel this way too?) and I wanted to take a breather from in-person markets while it was still cold outside. But in March, I was fully back at Nini Mart, with preparation for Chicago Stationery Fest and an additional Spring market I was invited to at Georgie’s in downtown Manhattan (a day before my flight to Chicago, no less!). Add my part-time job to the mix and the last two weeks of March felt like the real start of the year for Nini Mart.
New Sticker Sheets for the Spring
Leading up to March, I worked on 6 new sticker sheets to launch at Chicago Stationery Fest: 3 full-size sheets which I like to call “character sheets” as they feature the characters Nini, Tokki (my partner's dog) and extras like squirrels and bunnies, and 3 Small Planner sticker sheets. For this round of new designs, I challenged myself to pay more attention to the color palette and overall cohesiveness of the designs. The extra effort paid off and these look so great individually but fantastic together as a set. Love the pastel green, yellow and purple together!
"Travel Buddies" Sticker Sheet
<See more Sticker Sheets here>
<See Planner Sticker Sheets here>
Even though only one of the new designs is explicitly Spring themed, I like to think they all exude Spring vibes in their own ways. The "Daily To Do" Stickers makes me think of spring cleaning, and "Travel Buddies" makes me excited for all the upcoming travel plans I have for the year. And lastly, the stationery themed stickers - I think the yellow and orange color palette came out very Spring-y! These certainly were a big hit at CSF - the Planner sticker even sold out over the 2 days of the event! I will be re-ordering them soon so they can be available online.
Chicago Stationery Fest Recap
Chicago Stationery Fest was my first work trip outside of New York for Nini Mart - What a fun milestone! Packing for this 2-day out of state event was a bit more stressful than usual. I tried my best to be extra prepared, but because I've been printing, laminating and hand-cutting my small stickers at home, I had to bring all my materials (prints, scissors, laminating vinyl) with me so I could make some extra on the trip if necessary. Even then, I did sell out one of my Chicago exclusive designs on Day 1. This DIY process has been useful as it allows me to produce smaller batches of stickers and experiment with more design ideas, but I definitely had the thought during this trip to finally invest in a cutting machine. It's certainly worth considering if Nini Mart continues to do well this year!
Overall, CSF was extremely fun and fruitful for me as a vendor. Not only did I have a great time with my friends who traveled with me from NY, I also met a lot of people who made this trip memorable. It was great to meet customers who had previously ordered portrait drawings from me online!! It's always nice to put a face to a name, and I was so thankful and humbled that there were people supporting me from many states over. Speaking of portraits, I was genuinely surprised by the level of interest people showed in them! Shoutout to Min who helped me take orders while I had my head down drawing - I really couldn't have done so well without her help. Shoutout also to my table-mate ame who gave me lots of tips throughout the weekend and reminded me the importance of taking breaks!
I made a vlog about Chicago so don't miss it!
If you made it to the end of this blog post, thank you so much for reading!! I'm super energized for what I have planned for the rest of the year for Nini Mart. I plan to do lots of markets this year, so if you're in NYC please keep an eye out for my updates over on Instagram :)