January 2026 Letter to Dealers

Dear Dealers…

Happy New Year!

This is our 23rd year!! The market has had many ups and downs but we really hit our stride with the 2025 season. It felt good, the stars were aligned for sure and I am so pumped for this year’s Markets!! Some years we’ve had huge crowds but customers weren’t spending money. This last year we had both crowds and spenders and that’s our secret sauce.

As many of you long-time Randolph dealers know, I’m prone to adding and pausing events. This is due to my complusive/impulsive imperative to create new marketing concepts and logos and ad copy and marketing events like the pop-ups Vintage Shindig, Modern Vintage, Randolph Road Trip. But no matter how successful these shows appear to be, how packed they are and how much the customers are shopping, the problem is that they aren’t profitable and more importantly, they take my time and attention away from the main event.

With this reality and for 2026, I’m focusing solely on the five(5) Randolph Street Market’s at our home in the West Loop – YES we added back in a July event, historically July was the next highest attendance after May. July can get hot and it can also rain. But we’ve also had cold July’s in the past and who would have thought we’d have 70 degree weather at our November holiday show and 5 degrees at our December holiday show! Of course, we never know what the weather will be from day to day and year to year so we just plod ahead and plan for every eventuality. THE SHOW GOES ON RAIN OR SHINE but we are not stranded out in some cornfield. We have shelter and amenities and take every precaution so we can take care of you and our guests no matter the weather.

As far as Market curation, this year’s dealer lineup will be as fresh and as interesting as it has ever been. 2025 was so successful that we have A LOT of new incredibly talented art+antiques+vintage+global+food+makers in the cue and we’ll need to make room for this new blood. With five shows and only so much space, we may not be able to get some dealers into more than one or two shows, if at all, so that we can maintain the careful balance of goods we’re known for. At heart Randolph is both “America’s Largest — and Liveliest! — Urban Antiques Market” AND the most exciting shopping party in Chicago. I love giving all of you and our customers an experience like no other.

While we are a primary destination for vintage fashion lovers, rack upon rack of clothing is a turn-off and I don’t want the market swallowed up with clothing. Therefore we will be limiting the number of clothing, t-shirts and less unique vintage fashion dealers. We will at the same time be bringing in more high end and period vintage fashion, as well as men’s luxury vintage, and expanding the Modern Vintage Chicago designer vintage fashion brand in the Ballroom.

I have to discuss counterfeit goods in the vintage fashion world as it pertains to Randolph: companies like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, Coach etc have been suing antique shows and flea markets for hosting dealers who are selling fakes. We understand that some of you get your goods from people who may not know they own a fake and they tell you it’s the real thing out of ignorance. But if you are a dealer selling at the Randolph Street Market, you represent us and could take down the whole show if you’re selling knock offs of luxury goods. If we see anything we suspect is fake, our authenticators who walk the show will ask that these items be put away and if that item reappears the dealer will not be allowed to sell again at Randolph Street Market. We now have a partnership with Entrupy, the authentication service with an easy to use app you upload a few photos of seams, hardware, labels, notions etc, and you can have confidence that your merchandise is the real thing before you show up at the Market. We’ll send you our group link for Entrupy separately.

For all dealers, when you sign up for the Market, we only want the best of YOU – your booth display, branding, attitude, friendliness, personal grooming, respecting show rules, respecting and showing care for your neighbors. And we expect that when you describe your product line to us in the application that you will show up with items that are representative of what you’ve described. If you sign up as an art dealer or a food maker, we don’t want you showing up with — clothes!! Also booth sharing is only allowed with permission from management and each party sharing a booth must apply separately. We also ask that you have business cards you can hand out when asked so customers can track you down during and after the weekend. It’s part of being a professional, you’re either in business or you’re not!

I’ll be sending out a separate email to get google reviews for the market from all of you. Unfortunately there are people who just love to slam us in our reviews because they don’t want to pay to come in and don’t appreciate what the event is. We need all you believers to help the cause and we will take note of who jumps on there as we all pull together for the best season ever at Randolph Street Market! I like to think of the Market as a place where everyone can escape in a time-travel fantasy that keeps the outside world away. I hear so many people tell me that Randolph is their happy place and I want to keep it that way by having the best people – YOU – sharing your passions with our wonderful customers.

It’s only January but as we know, Memorial Day Weekend will be here before we know it so start planning and I’ll see all of you soon!

With love and appreciation,
♥️

Sally + RSM crew