Viner and Rovilyn Ramos at their shop Golden VR
Hammersmith & Fulham's historic market, found on North End Road, is the perfect place to explore your newest business venture.
The road is visited by more than 30,000 visitors a week and, during our seasonal pedestrianised festivals, more than 15,000 visitors in a single day.
To help you decide if opening a stall is the right business move for you, we've created an offer to help new traders test out market life.
This includes:
- a week's free pitch rental and reduced fees for up to a further 18 months
- a free street trading licence for a month
- a free parking permit for up to 18 months.
Hear all about our new market trader offer from Cllr Ben Coleman, Deputy Leader of H&F, on YouTube.
From market stall to high street store
Husband and wife, Viner Ramos, 39, and Rovilyn Ramos, 40, took advantage of H&F's new trader offer.
The business partners ran a stall for three months before upsizing to their shop Golden VR, in North End Road.
"We started the market stall to gain a few regular customers and trial our business," Viner explained.
"I'd worked in Greggs and Whole Food before this, but I decided to try and open my shop because I wanted to grow in career. Running my own store was a dream of mine."
The store sells fresh fruit and vegetables, dry and frozen food from the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, China and Japan.
"I'm Filipino and so I knew what would be good to sell and what customers might like," Viner explained.
"And is customers ask if we have products we're not currently stocking, then we're able to order it and sell it the next week," added Rovilyn.
Joining the market
The pair put their success down to having started out in North End Road's market.
"We'd definitely recommend joining the market, it's a great way to build a customer base," Rovilyn explained.
"The council was so helpful and accommodating, they told us exactly what we needed to do to get started and I knew that if we ever had any questions, I could just call them up," added Rovilyn.
For Viner, the best part about being a trader was the visibility:
"Everyone can see you on the road. Even if they're not Filipino or Asian, they walk past you and come to see what you're selling."
"We got to know our market trader neighbours really well even though we were only on the road 3 months. There was a real community between everyone."
"We didn't have time to give all of our customers notice that we were moving but the traders always direct anyone who's looking for us."
To find out more about North End Road's market, visit our webpage.
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