Strategizing for Fulton Street Market

The next piece of the puzzle was values. It became clear to me, after spending months at the Market, that there were unspoken rules— consistent decisions were made by different team members even without bonafide precedents. 

I kicked off the values discussions by asking the board: "What was a recent decision that felt right, but risky?” This question was intended to determine what existing values hindered them from growth and what underlying values were steering the ship. As seen on the chart above, leading questions included: why the Market launched the BIPOC Night Market (for a historically White organization), why FSM dropped "Farmers" from its name, why they have a food recovery program, and how they selected their vendors. 

From those leading questions, I kept asking "why" to push the board to uncover the character of the Market, as if it is a value-consistent person. In the end, all the risky decisions that felt right distilled down to three values: 

This strategy project would not have been a challenge without a classic writer's block. Even with multiple brainstorming sessions with the board, we were not able to come up with a statement that made sense to everyone. It was clear that the FSM means different things to different people and the target segmentation made it evident that the Market was serving too many masters. It was impossible to write a mission statement that spoke to each of our stakeholders. We knew that if the Market's future depended only on one lifeline, it would be Experiential Shoppers. 

Unlike the other segments, Experiential Shoppers are what businesses would call the ideal customer. They visit the Market frequently, they support the Farmers financially, and they donate to the Market's cause. From looking at the Market's past revenue streams, it was clear that Experiential Shoppers were the biggest source of income for the Market and the vendors as well. We were able to clearly distinguish Experiential Shoppers with what I coined as "Agricultural Participation."

At the Market, Agricultural Participation looks like:

The journey to restrategize the Market was nonlinear and somewhat untraditional. I was taught that vision statements are typically created and transmitted top-down, but that was not the case for FSM. The culture of FSM is community-driven, many ideas come from the shoppers, vendors, and farmers. The role of the organization is to translate those ideas into reality. 

The team tried to throw spaghetti on the wall, proposing various vision statements, but we realized that we were stuck describing the current state of the Market. The drafted statements did not challenge or invigorate the staff and board to be the best they knew they could be. So, we continued to listen to the community's voices. 

Eventually, it became clear where the future of the Market was headed— farmers were dwindling in number and the wealth gap in the United States continued to widen. As a farmers market, FSM understood its burden to enlighten the Grand Rapids community, reestablish the importance of local agriculture, and ensure that local produce remains accessible for all. In the end, we penned a vision that wholely captured FSM's long-term commitment to the two groups of people that are core to FSM's existence: 

Since the induction of the new strategy, the Market has continued to soar in success. For one, the BIPOC Night Market sees record-high numbers of vendors and attendants, testifying to the change that has been felt by Grand Rapidians who may not have been historically included at the Market. 

In September of 2024, I was fortunate to serve as the emcee at A Night at the Market, FSM's inaugural fundraiser, which brought 100+ attendees to learn about the Market's new direction and celebrate another century in the making.