PARK SLOPE — The new Brooklyn Flea location at Grand Army Plaza is adding a host of new vendors starting this weekend and hopes to expand to around 50 sellers by summer's end, organizers said Wednesday.
The market runs on Sundays and launched in May, not long after Brooklyn Flea moved its popular Sunday Flea from Williamsburg to DUMBO. The DUMBO spot is smaller than the Flea's old Williamsburg location, so the roster of vendors had to shrink from about 100 to 70, said Eric Demby, co-founder of Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, the outdoor food market.
"When Sundays at Grand Army Plaza became available, we saw it mainly as a chance to maintain the same number of vendors on that day," Demby told DNAinfo New York.
"But we've always wanted to create an environment that’s a little less 'flea' so friends of ours like Soor Ploom (kids clothing) and Olivera Soap (salves, teas, herbs; also Neil from [Brooklyn Flea vendor] Lumpia Shack’s wife!) would feel like it’s a fit for their stuff."
Though the outdoor stalls and facetime with makers lend the market a casual folksy feel, some of the price points are worthy of upscale boutiques. Many vendors peddle one-of-a-kind creations that are either American-made or from fair trade sources abroad, often using organic or sustainable materials.
New vendors joining the market in the coming weeks include the Chicago-based custom furniture company The Last Workshop, the vintage shop Black Uhuru, and the fashion and homewares seller Alkemie.
Others are:
► Soor Ploom, a children's "clothier" for kids ages 0 through 9 that stocks $68 high-waisted linen culotte-style shorts for little girls designed and made in Brooklyn.
► Le Cou, a small fashion company based in Brooklyn and Portland, Ore. that's on a mission to bring back women's dickeys — those faux collars you can layer underneath a shirt. The "revolutionary little shirts" sell for about $78.
► Katexico, which makes $100 Mexican peasant blouses and uses some of the proceeds to support local artisans in Mexico.
► Ama Chronicles, which sells handmade yoga mat bags, tea blends, and "synergistic sprays" to disinfect yoga mats.
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