Artists and vendors lined the Upland Brewing Co. Woodshop Saturday, selling an eclectic range of items from vintage clothing to handmade body care. This was the first time Flow Collective has hosted an event in Bloomington.
Flow Collective is a group of five organizers and small business owners based in Indianapolis. They arrange pop-up markets for other local vendors and artists. Vendor sign up is on a first come, first served basis. Around 2023, the previous owner Ryan chose some of the organizers to take over and they changed the name from Goods to Flow Collective.
Madison Slade is a Flow Collective organizer and owner of Void Vila. She graduated from IU in 2019 with a degree in fashion design. Her brand focuses on commission work, repairs and client alterations. She has booths in several stores, including Eclaras in Bloomington and has been selling online for many years. Slade joined Flow Collective in 2023 with her partner and fellow organizer Nathan Kolodziej. She said the market emphasizes supporting people statewide.
“We felt like that was a good name since we're based in Indianapolis, but we kind of want to be able to branch out to other places,” Slade said. “We really want to focus on creators, creatives and people with small businesses. A huge focus of Flow is sustainability, bringing things back into your local community and supporting people in your local community.”
Aside from clothing, some booths included crochet, paintings, collectibles, vintage jewelry and other handcrafted items. Visitors walked freely between the outdoor and indoor area. Inside the woodshop, Upland had a beverage table by the entrance and vendors filled the rest of the space in front of the beer barrels.
Among the vendors set up outside was Trent Bruner, a Flow Collective organizer and owner of Nicely Threaded. Bruner currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and drives up whenever there is a pop-up. Bruner was born in the 1980s and said that because his dad would take him to the beach, neon clothing tends to stick out to him. He also sells other items from that period to create an overall nostalgic vibe for his shop.
“It's a lot of what most vintage people wanna sell, it’s like ‘80s to ‘90s, like it's where all the nostalgia is,” Bruner said. “What I like to curate is the kind of fun, vibrant graphic T-shirts, and I've got movie promo stuff. I also have a booth that I sell VHS tapes and collectibles. This is where I like to focus on, but everybody does it, so I have to kind of differentiate myself in different ways."
After inheriting Flow Collective, Bruner said the group has learned how to best assist vendors from other markets.
“There's been a lot of markets where it just didn't feel like people were looking out for us,” Bruner said. “We've all made sacrifices just to get this to where it's at, and I think it's gonna be really awesome in the future; we have high hopes. I've been a part of multiple other markets that were done very well, there were just things that we could have done better, and, so, we just kind of took that and ran with it.”
IU freshman Savannah Roope attended the pop-up with a few of her friends. She said a couple of her friends are frequent thrifters and heard about the event.
“I'm a thrifter too, so that is why we came here,” Roope said. “I'm honestly looking for a bunch of T-shirts. I usually go for baggier shorts, I sort of like old fashioned kind of shorts because you can't really find those and they're like overly priced, so here I'm able to get those.”
