Urban market Third + Bird brings retailers back into the Bay's basement

After more than four years, the basement of the Bay in downtown Winnipeg will finally have retailers in it again but only for a day.

The women behind the urban market Third + Bird have spent four months planning their latest event and more than a week assembling booths, installing art and filling the massive space with local products.

On Saturday, about 110 local vendors will sell their wares out of the basement. Several restaurants will offer coffee, doughnuts, Popsicles, perogies and more out of a makeshift cafeteria, and artists will show their work in a small pop-up gallery.

• The Bay downtown in Winnipeg shrinks retail space again, closing 4th floor
• Future of the Bay building in downtown Winnipeg up in the air

"It's a really neat business model for a lot of young entrepreneurs to approach other businesses [and use] these underdeveloped spaces," said Chandra Kremski, the co-founder of Third + Bird. "There's something that we're doing that hopefully can catch on bring these markets or young entrepreneurs into these spaces."

The Bay's basement hasn't changed much since Zellers left in 2013 hastily ripped-down signs and fluorescent lighting remain, as does the signage and countertop of a long-shuttered cafeteria-style restaurant.

Not long ago, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra held a small performance in the space, but beyond that, it's largely gone untouched.

Normally, toget into the spaceyou have to get pre-approval from an executive in Toronto, sign yourself in with a clerk, get a badge and be escorted downstairs.

But Kremski and her partner,Charla Smeall, saw an opportunity to take their vendors from a church in the North End to a more central venue with more space.

Kremski said the pair had to jump through a lot of hoops to get access to the space, but they'd do it again immediately.

'Ready to spend'

"We do tend to look for a space that's different because I feel like the convention centre is very trade show, but this kind of feels like home and local," said Smeall. "Our market is rather untraditional."

Third + Bird has been around for nine years. Smeall and Kremski started it as a place to showcase their art and as a fundraiser for local arts programs.

Both of them are now employed nearly full-time organizing the market, whose target demographic is young shopperswho Smeall says want to know who made their product and where it came from.

"That's our main demographic, but we're finding even younger," said Smeall, with Kremski adding, "They come to the market ready to spend."

Local vendors go from markets to Oscars

Most of the vendors make the products in their homes (and a few have storefronts) but some have had massive success ditching traditional business models in favour of online marketing and urban markets.

Kremski points to Manitoba success stories and Third + Bird vendors Gorp, Little Box of Rocks andCoal and Canary Candle Company.

Coal and Canary started out as a hobby for Amanda Buhse and Tom Jansen three years ago.

"We just started taking professional photos of these candles that we created, and next thing we knew, three months later, we got our first [wholesale customer]. They approached us because of Instagram. Then we got into the swag bags for the Grammys and the Oscars," said Buhse.

• Winnipeg candle-making duo gaining international exposure
• Manitoba energy bar Gorp headed to the Oscars

Now, both are employed full-time at the business, have a staff of six people and sell out of about 250 stores in Canada and the United States.

Coal and Canary doesn't have a storefront, but their Manitoba warehouse pumps out more than 700 candles a day with names like Crop Tops and Raindrops, and Vodka Crans and Elastic Waistbands.

Buhse travels to urban markets across Canada and the U.S. to sell their candles because, she says, "there was a niche that targeted our demographic that were coming to these shows."

Kremski said some vendors have travelled as far as Dubai and have moved on to work for international brands like Umbra.

Saturday's market has everything from boxes of rocks (yes, the ones that Gwyneth Paltrow recommended that time) to supplies for craft cocktails to more traditional craft-show farelike clothingand bath and body products.

Saturday's sale is on from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the basement of the Bay downtown. Admission is $5.