Portland Saturday Market Mission
Statement
“The mission of the Portland Saturday Market
is to provide an environment that encourages the economic and artistic growth of emerging and accomplished artisans. Central to this mission shall be to operate a marketplace. That marketplace, and other market programs, shall honor craftsmanship, design innovation, marketing ethics, and authenticity of product.”
History of Portland Saturday
Market
Every Saturday and Sunday
from March until December the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood transforms into a
thriving arts and crafts open-air marketplace. Seeing the market’s operations
staff of 10 roll out the power lines and delegate booth spaces with precision
each weekend for so many years, most of the neighborhood has come to think of
Portland Saturday Market (PSM) as a business like any other. But it certainly
wasn’t always that way, and some surprising elements still lie at the core of
this unusual non-profit operation.
Portland Saturday Market was the brainchild of two
women, Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf. Both were artists living in the area
who had sold at the Saturday Market in Eugene; their idea was to create a
similar style of market in downtown Portland. Beginning in December 1973, the
two visited everyone they could think of in the city to sell their idea: an
open-air market of all handmade food and craft items. It would be a win-win
situation they insisted. Artists would have an economic outlet for their work,
customers would gain better access to locally-produced items, and the city would
have a new attraction to draw customers into the downtown area.
Receiving positive feedback to their proposal, Scharf
and Teasdale recruited three other supporters of the idea – Raul Soto-Seelig,
Anne Hughes and George Sheldon – to serve on a preliminary board of directors
and incorporated under the name Portland Saturday Market. The new organization
was incorporated under Oregon law as a mutual benefit corporation, a special
class of institutions that do not make a profit, but exist for the economic
benefit of their members, making PSM a non-profit organization that is not
tax-exempt. The five founders could have set up the market as a for-profit
venture, but they envisioned a market where craftspeople would share the cost of
running the market collectively and would keep whatever profit they personally
made. It was to be a market for the members, governed by the members.
With legal standing firmly established, Scharf and
Teasdale were able to apply for a startup grant from the Metropolitan Arts
Council, which gave PSM $1,000. But they still didn’t have a location for the
market. Enter Bill Naito. Naito offered them a parking lot, known as the
"Butterfly lot" owing to the large butterfly mural looming over the market.
For the first year that the market operated, there was
no site plan. Members set up booths wherever and they chose, working it out with
their neighbors to make sure nobody’s booth blocked anyone else’s. As the market
grew, vendors began arriving earlier and earlier to claim their favorite spots,
leading to the establishment of the ‘seven o’clock rule’ at the start of the
1975 season, which stated that no one could start putting up a booth or claim a
spot before 7:00 am. A few weeks later, a clear site plan was created for the
first time, marking out 8’ x 8’ booth spaces, defining aisles and a pattern for
customer traffic.
The market moved to its current site under the Burnside
Bridge in 1976, and started staying open on Sundays the following year. Things
have changed a lot from the early days. PSM has over 400 members and generates
an estimated $8 million in gross sales annually. It has become a central
economic engine for the historic Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood, and attracts
an estimated 750,000 visitors to this area each year.
But some important things have stayed the same. PSM
could never have gotten started without the cooperation and aid of the city and
of the Naito family, and still relies on those long-term partnerships. PSM’s
board of directors continues to be made up of a majority of market vendors,
putting market governance in the hands of its vendors. Six full-time and ten
part-time staff members administer the operations and various programs of the
market, including PSM’s newly designed website .
Items are still sold by the people who make them, giving the customers the
chance to talk directly with the artisan about their craft and why artists
choose to make their living at the market.
" In spite of how much
the market has grown, it is still, at heart, an artists’ community
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