List your vendor business

For stallholders, makers, bakers, food traders and anyone who sells at markets. This walks through the whole form, section by section, with a picture of each part.

About 15 minutes to read

Before you start

  • A Market Hive SA account, and you are logged in
  • A logo or a clear photo of your product
  • Your contact number and email
  • If you sell food: your food handling and compliance certificates as photos or PDF files

Step 1: Open the form

On your dashboard, click the gold + Create a listing button at the top right. Then make sure Vendor is the highlighted button at the top of the form.

Four buttons labelled Vendor, Market, Supplier and Entertainment. The Vendor button is highlighted with a gold border.
Vendor is selected when its button has the gold border and cream background.

You do not have to finish in one sitting

The form is long because a fuller listing gets found more often. Only the business name is compulsory. You can save with the basics and come back to add the rest through Edit profile at any time.

Step 2: Business details

The Business details section with boxes for business name, trading name, description, category and additional categories.
The first section. The business name is the only compulsory field on the whole form.
  • Business name - the name customers know you by. This becomes the heading on your public page, so write it exactly as you want it seen. "Copper Kettle Kitchen", not "copper kettle".
  • Trading name - only if you trade under a different name to your registered one. Leave it empty if they are the same.
  • Description - a few sentences on what you sell and what makes it worth a visit. Write it the way you would tell a customer at your stall.
  • Category - pick the one that fits best. This decides which searches you turn up in, so it matters. You can tick extra categories underneath if you genuinely span more than one.

Do not tick every category

Ticking categories that do not really apply does not get you more customers. It gets you shoppers who bounce straight off, which pushes your listing down over time. Two or three honest categories beat ten.

Step 3: Contact and location

The Contact and location section with boxes for contact person, mobile number, alternative number, public email, website, WhatsApp, province, city, suburb, address and postal code.
How customers reach you, and roughly where you are based.
  • Contact person - who should be asked for. Usually you.
  • Mobile and WhatsApp - the number you actually answer. Most enquiries from this site arrive by WhatsApp, so fill it in if you use it.
  • Public email - shown on your listing. It can be different from the email you log in with, and often should be.
  • Province, city and suburb - used by shoppers filtering for what is near them. Get these right or local customers will not find you.
  • Address - only if you want people arriving at a physical place. A market trader with no shopfront can leave it blank.

Anything you put here is public

These details appear on your listing for anyone to see. If you work from home and would rather not publish the address, leave the address box empty. City and suburb alone are enough to be found locally.

Step 4: Products

The Products section with large text boxes for what you sell and what makes your business unique, plus a price range drop-down and payment method tick boxes.
The section that does most of the selling for you.
  • What products do you sell? - be specific. "Sourdough loaves, cinnamon buns and seasonal preserves" is worth far more than "baked goods", because those are the words people actually type into a search box.
  • What makes your business unique? - your one honest difference. Gluten free, made on the farm, family recipe, plastic free packaging. One real thing beats three vague ones.
  • Price range - sets expectations so you get fewer wasted enquiries.
  • Payment methods - tick everything you accept. "Cash only" is genuinely useful for a shopper to know before they drive out to a market.

Step 5: Markets

The Markets section with text boxes for markets you currently trade at and markets you would like to join, plus tick boxes for the types of market you attend and the provinces you travel to.
Where you trade now and where you would like to.

Organisers read this section when they are deciding whether to accept you. Listing the markets you already trade at is the closest thing to a reference you have here, so fill it in even if the list is short.

Provinces you travel to matters more than people expect. An organiser two provinces away will not approach you unless you have said you will travel.

Step 6: Stall information

The Stall information section with a stall size drop-down and tick boxes for needing power, water and shelter, and for having your own gazebo.
Your practical requirements at a market.

This is the logistics an organiser needs before they can place you. Be accurate rather than modest: turning up needing power at a market with no power is a bad day for everyone.

These become your defaults

Whatever you set here is used as the starting point every time you apply to attend a market, so you do not retype it each time. You can still change it for a particular market later.

Step 7: Food vendors

Tick I sell food and four upload boxes appear. If you do not sell food, skip this section entirely.

The Food vendors section with the 'I sell food' box ticked, revealing four file upload boxes: food handling certificate, kitchen compliance certificate, Certificate of Acceptability, and public liability insurance.
Ticking 'I sell food' reveals the compliance uploads.
  • Food handling certificate
  • Kitchen compliance certificate
  • Certificate of Acceptability (COA)
  • Public liability insurance

Each accepts a PDF or a photo, up to 8 MB. A clear photo taken on your phone is fine as long as the text can be read.

Uploading these gets you approved faster

Organisers see these documents attached to your application. A food vendor with certificates already attached is an easy yes. One without them means an email exchange first, and some organisers simply move on to the next applicant.

Step 8: Promotions and matching

The Promotions and matching section with tick boxes for promotions offered, languages spoken, and availability.
Optional, but it feeds the suggestions you get later.

Languages and availability are used when we suggest markets to you and suggest you to organisers. Promotions is simply what you offer: specials, loyalty cards, bulk discounts.

Step 9: Marketing

The Marketing section with tick boxes for the channels the business uses, such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Where you already promote yourself.

Ticking the channels you use tells organisers you will help promote a market day, which counts in your favour when they choose between applicants.

Step 10: Images

The Images section with a Choose File button for the main image and another for a gallery of up to ten photos.
Your main image and up to ten gallery photos.
  • Main image - your logo, or your best single product photo. This is the picture shown in every directory listing, so it is the one that decides whether anyone clicks. Up to 4 MB.
  • Gallery - up to ten more photos. Your stall set up, your products, you at work.

Photograph in daylight

You do not need a good camera. You need good light. Take your photos outside on an overcast day, or next to a window, with a plain background. That single change does more than any equipment. The get more enquiries guide goes further into this.

Step 11: Agreements

Five tick boxes, all compulsory. They confirm you accept the terms and privacy policy, that you want to be listed in the public directory, that we may show the content you upload, and that your information is accurate.

The Agreements section with five compulsory tick boxes covering terms, privacy, directory listing, content release and accuracy.
All five must be ticked. The form will not submit otherwise.

Why the fuss

South African privacy law (POPIA) requires us to record that you agreed, and to what. That record is kept against your account.

Step 12: Submit it

A gold Submit application button next to a Cancel link.
The button at the very bottom of the form.

Click Submit application. If anything compulsory is missing, the page scrolls to the problem and shows a short message in red. Fix it and submit again.

Where you land next depends on how you started. If you picked a plan on the Hive Memberships page first, you go straight to checkout to finish joining. If you started from + Create a listing on your dashboard, you go back to the dashboard and your listing appears with a pending label.

Step 13: What happens next

A person at Market Hive SA reads every new listing before it goes live. This is what keeps the directory worth using. Once approved, the label changes to published and your page is public.

A finished public vendor page showing a banner, logo, description, product gallery, contact buttons and the markets the vendor attends.
A finished vendor page as shoppers see it.

Once you are live, the useful next steps are:

Next guideList your market or festival →For organisers. Includes repeating market dates and approving the vendors who attend.

Still stuck? Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Tell us which step you are on and we will walk you through it.