Monday Market: Mastering the craft

PALMER — Kenda Huling is returning to the Palmer Depot on Jan. 29 after successfully launching her second business, the Monday Market in 2017. She is taking several vendors and mentors with her and is looking for more. With them, are upcoming entrepreneurs who used to have no home of their own, let alone a business license. Huling is creating a community hub to complement her work with housing women and teaching them to be more independent. Last year, she got 64 women into homes; all of them have jobs. It’s a place where handmade goods are met with handmade successes.

“This is the thing I wanted to do. I enjoy it. I have the connections. I’m good at it,” Huling said.

Based in the Palmer Train Depot, the Monday Market serves a multitude of purposes. It’s a locally driven produce, craft, food, clothing market. Huling wants “real” products, “Valley meat, Valley eggs,” and so on.

It’s also a weekly, community classroom. In addition to selling goods, members of the community lead classes and workshops with a range of topics Huling wants to keep ever expanding. She loves to teach and thrives from novelty, collaborating with members of the community with their own skills to offer. She wants the women she’s working wit to learn how to take care of themselves.

“I can teach you to do this,” Huling said.

Huling spends much of her time housing women and teaching them “cottage industry skills,” manufacturing and selling one’s goods. These skills cover a broad range of specialties from gardening to sewing. She is currently training some women to run their own business. They are blanketed under her license for now but through her program they can obtain their own license. She’s had food trucks on site before and is still looking for more. It’s apparently worked fairly well for a few vendors and food trucks, a “jump off point” for some and complementary addition for others. Some food trucks have been successful enough through enough business and exposure to launch into new territories. She referred to one woman who used her newfound successes to find more work and cater weddings, “she doesn’t need to come in and sell cupcakes anymore.”

She does annual spring, summer and holiday contracts with their own rates and a daily rate. The daily rates are a bit higher because she is encouraging vendors to have a working relationship with the market, which includes advertising not included with the daily option. Business owners like Kelly Pollock with Forever Endeavor art studio and Betty Pierce with Bbella Studio have led workshops at the Market. Pollock taught sewing and art workshops and Pierce taught alcohol ink classes. Huling is essentially amassing an army of artisan and entrepreneurial women, combining forces with active business owners and training the upcoming.

“I’m not one to sit back,” Huling said.

Huling runs another business, Get The Junk Out Of The Trunk! a mobile flea market with produce and handcrafted goods that runs between parades, the week after Colony Days until the week before the State Fair.

It gained an appeal for people who would normally garage sale out of their house can come to the market. A portion of the proceeds from both of Huling’s markets goes towards helping homeless women in the Mat-Su. The Monday Market is open about 40 days in the year, between 11:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and with classes between 7 and 8:30 p.m., although Huling is looking to have more classes earlier in the day. She also wants to expand her community classes. There are countless subjects she would like to incorporate with children as well as adults.

Anyone interested in selling their wares or running a workshop can contact Huling at 907-770-3532.