When is a craft fair no longer just a craft fair? Drop into Los Angeles’s thrilling In Todo and you may find your answer.
But be sure to block off a few hours. Your $10 entry fee to the BIPOC artisan market popup, held in the arts district FRANKIE warehouse venue, grants access to no less than a full-on party.
Since December 2021, for one winter weekend music thumps as the California sun beats down on the substantial indoor-outdoor space. Over 120 booths offer goods like the bright, curvy textiles of Latina + Filipino-founded Selva Negra—co-owned by In Todo co-founder Kristen Gonzalez—or the sumptuous patchworks of Peruvian and Angelino brand Loti.
There are luminous knits and satins by KkCo, a.k.a Kara Jubin, who cut her teeth in brands like NEED and Lucky, clay creatures by Knotwork LA a.k.a freelance industrial designer Linda Hsiao, crystals the color of the rainbow from Indigenous-owned Mirror for the Moon, and the neon tropical wishlist plants of The Plant Chica, or Salvadoran-Angelino Sandra Mejia.
Even when colors are relatively muted, they underline the fair’s ethos of sustainability and inclusivity: undergarments from PROCLAIM, by In Todo co-founder Shobha Philips, are made partially from recycled plastic bottles and come in a dynamic range of skin tones. The goal is to represent all—all who wear underwear, anyway—and redefine the pigment “nude.”
💡 Pro tip: Just as sustainability is key to In Todo, our annual forecasting guide, TRNDS 2024, identified Back To Nature as a top trend with both attendees and organizers looking to be more green this year. Here’s our ultimate guide to planning a sustainable event.
It’s a welcome, inclusive space. As in many creative fields, in the fashion world, BIPOC creators are typically overlooked or tokenized, left to fend for themselves when it comes to representation. But here, in this indoor-outdoor warehouse, they’re on full visible display.
The warehouse becomes a de facto facilitator of community and incubator of ideas. “For my career it’s always been about building community and working with artisans and emerging brands and retailers, so for me this is an extension of that,” says Adele Tetangco, a Vancouver-based Filipina and another of the fair’s four female co-founders, as well as co-founder of the ethical womenswear label Et Tigre.
In the most recent fair a community corner offered up creative activations like stick and poke tattoos, journaling lessons with Inside Then Out, and free sneaker bedazzling with By Way of Us and Superga. “We’re always trying to think of something different to make the experience that much more,” says Tetangco.
There was also an inspired nostalgic 90s picture booth, hazy mall-style, which the founders all participated in. And a range of food trucks offered international fare, from sweet purple-flecked Ube buns, to classic enchiladas to layered banh mis and nutty sesame milkshakes. “Basically anyone that elicits an ‘Oh my god I really want to eat that’ becomes part of it,” says Tetangco, laughing.
So when is a craft fair no longer just a craft fair? When it’s In Todo. Meaning, on paper: from the Latin “in toto” or, as a whole. Meaning, in practice: A full, cultural experience.
A melding of creative minds—and resources
The year was 2020, and a looming interrupter of lives called Covid-19 had forced consumers and entrepreneurs alike indoors. Four such makers were In Todo founders, Gonzalez, Tetangco, Philips, and Trinidadian-American womenswear designer Aliya Wanek. “We were all at home,” says Tetangco. “And when you’re at home, you have a little more time.”
In the outside world, Black Lives Matter protests had become commonplace throughout the US, bucking and exposing cracks throughout society, including the field of fashion. “There was so much racial disparity being talked about in ways that we’ve never spoken about before,” explains Tetangco. It was, for the four founders, a call to action.
Gonzalez—who also came up with the name In Todo—suggested an online marketplace through Shopify, featuring underserved vendors. “We wanted to highlight this amazing group of BIPOC creatives that we had all known but who maybe had not always been at the forefront,” says Tetangco. “Working in fashion for so many years, nobody spoke about it that way until Covid hit. So it was a great way for us to highlight a community of smaller designers that maybe nobody was really talking about before.”
Years of experience under their collective belts, they culled their vast Rolodex for vendors to include. Once the online marketplace was a success, the next stop was an in-person affair.
Taking it to the streets
In December of 2021, the first In Todo marketplace was launched. “The first show was really learning a lot,” says Tetangco. “The onboarding piece and getting vendors, that wasn’t difficult because that was what I’d been doing for years. But there was a lot of research on the operations end.”
In the first year, eighty vendors spanned categories like accessories, apparel, art, jewelry, beauty, home and lifestyle, and wellness. Each booth in the lineup was carefully curated for a balance of offerings.
They were also deliberate about their marketing strategy by creating digital ads, sending out regular emails, putting up billboards, and partnering with Eventbrite.
But perhaps most important was leveraging the community of participating vendors, through partnership posts and newsletters networks. “A huge part of our success comes from the participation of our vendor community. There’s power in numbers, so with everyone promoting the event it makes our marketing initiatives even stronger,” says Tetangco. “At the end of the day, we want a million people to come, so we’re actively working on growing our audience.”
💡 Pro tip: In order to make smart marketing decisions, you need to understand what’s working best for your event. Using Eventbrite’s unique tracking links will help you keep track of where ticket sales are coming from, so you know which marketing channels are the most effective for you.
The strategy included working to create a community among the vendors, with smaller vendor events. “Managing vendor relations is always going to be one of the most difficult pieces of putting something like this on,” says Tetangco. Snack Size (Tetangco’s marketing agency collective) hosts a pizza move-in party, LINE LA often hosts vendors’ dinners, and Vista Print provides get-to-know-you activations. “So really working together bringing all these small groups together.”
“A huge part of our success comes from the participation of our vendor community. There’s power in numbers.”
Adele Tetangco
And the strategy has been working. The most recent fair in November 2023 was bigger than ever: attendance at the fair had grown by 20 percent, compared to the previous year, and In Todo welcomed a total of 120 vendors, coming in from as far as New York and Canada. They even had one very notable customer, superstar tennis player Naomi Osaka. Turns out, she was just tagging along with a friend. Next on the agenda is to add a second, intimate outdoor fair in May 2024 and it promises to be just as uplifting.
The words ‘Whole Lotta Love’ are emblazoned across In Todo’s official merchandise and sum up the event’s ethos and empowering nature perfectly. The winning formula for this marketplace is rooted in its vendor community and supporters, who are united on a shared purpose… and a whole lotta love.
