About Dream Town Market

I want to welcome you to Dream Town Market and share with you my vision for this “market of the mind”.

Back in the mid-80s, in a time before eBay and Amazon, if you were one of those adventurous souls who frequented estate and garage sales and wound up with a lot of things to sell, short of opening your own store about your only option was “little nickel” classified advertising or if you were lucky, a flea market.

And since it would be another 15 years before she achieved the status of “Power Seller”, such was the circumstance my wife (whom I was dating at the time in Seattle) found herself in. It was especially poignant because she really does have an “eye” for things, compounded by an excellent “work ethic” for dumpster diving and early AM garage sales. 😉

So with all this “stuff” what is an uber, future eBay’er to do… with no eBay?

The answer was to be found on the other “main street”. Every town with a population over 100K has one. I would venture to call it the real main street. The street with a town’s history and the real stories of “mom and pop” ventures of success and failure. You might also call it the “under belly” since the street I’m talking about is a reflection of the full spectrum of human desire. I think you get the idea.

In San Diego, it would be El Cajon Blvd, in Spokane, Washington it would be Sprague Ave., and in Seattle it would be without a doubt Aurora. North of Seattle there is the town of Edmonds. Back in the 80s, pushed back on the east side of “99” there was a large building with a corresponding large parking lot that touted itself as an “Antique Mall”. Inside the “mall”, a huge room filled with a Universe of Kitsch, was a space divvied up into “stalls” of varying sizes. A vendor could rent a small space, fill it with their (usually) themed inventory, stop by and maintain the space now and then and pick up a check – their cut of the sales.

My wife shared a space with a friend and they both did very well (as in profit). It was a lot of fun for them since they did not have to worry about the black hole of overhead. The mall’s monthly fees and cut of the sales were modest and structured to attract just such “small timers”.

I have no idea if this place still is there. It’s hard to imagine. It was a lot of fun as a customer, being able to wander around and see and touch crazy mid-century stuff – and buy it right there on a whim.

With that fond memory in mind, I look around on the Internet and imagine such a “mall” for the “small timer”. But in this case, I’m not talking about physical products. I’m talking about the wealth of experience and knowledge locked up in the brains of so many people that will never be shared, except for maybe a few family members and friends. If there were only a place where people could easily share their histories, their passions, their downright entertaining stories, and have an easy and transparent mechanism in place that would permit the “story teller” to be compensated for their “shows”, I think such a place would be priceless for the information that was shared and not lost forever.

This is the long term vision I have for Dream Town Market. I make no apologies for having the goal of providing an environment where people earn a few dollars to help put food on the table and pay the rent. In other words, at Dream Town Market, “profit” is not a “dirty word” but a reflection of wealth creation, the sharing of information, and the fulfillment of dreams – all done on a very human and entertaining scale where owners of information are respected with privacy and compensated for their information shared. Social media projects such as Diaspora will be seriously explored and considered as tactics are defined for growth in 2011.

The road is wide open and there is a long, long way to go. Remember it’s all about the journey and never give up. Never loose sight of your dreams.

Welcome to your Dream Town Market.

Patrick

Patrick aka xearther
Manager, Dream Town Market