The Christmas market that doesn't exist
Fraudsters are selling stalls at real festive markets they have nothing to do with — and at some that were never happening at all. Small traders lose the fee; real organisers lose their good name. One page on your own website protects both.
This month, a historic venue in Norwich had to warn traders that someone was selling stalls at its Christmas fairs on 22 and 29 November. The emails looked right. The dates were real. The venue had nothing to do with them.
“We are appalled,” a spokesperson said, “that someone would use our name in this way and potentially exploit hard-working independent businesses.” Organisers in Essex and Surrey have issued similar warnings in recent weeks.
On the other side of the Atlantic, a small city in Nebraska found a post in a local craft-fair group, apparently from the city itself, announcing that it was taking vendor sign-ups for its holiday market. The post was AI-generated. Anyone who commented got a private message asking for money, bank details — or gift cards. One or two people paid.
Earlier this year a US state attorney general warned about the same pattern: fake event pages copying a real event’s photos, description and branding, then asking vendors to book by text and pay straight into somebody’s personal account.
Why this lands on the smallest businesses
The people this targets are, almost by definition, small: the candle maker, the baker, the woodturner, the person who knits through the summer for one good weekend in December. A stall fee is often the single biggest bet they make all year.
And they find stalls the way everyone does now — in local groups, through messages, from posts that get shared around. That is exactly where a fake organiser lives. No website. No address. Just a convincing post and a fast reply.
The tools have made that easier. Writing a friendly, plausible invitation used to take a little effort, and a scammer’s English often gave them away. A generated post now reads like the real thing, with copied photos to match. As one expert said when the Nebraska scam came to light: “Small towns are a target … their tech infrastructure tends to be softer than larger cities.”
The organiser loses too
It is easy to think of the stallholder as the only victim. They are not.
When a fake uses your venue, your market name or your photos, the anger lands on you. Traders who paid a stranger turn up expecting a pitch. Some will blame you. Some will tell other traders not to bother with your fair next year. You did nothing wrong, and your name took the damage.
The best defence an organiser has is to make the real version impossible to confuse with the fake — and that means one plain page on a website you control.
The page that settles it
A stallholder who isn’t sure has one reliable move: go to the organiser’s own website, by typing the address rather than following a link, and check.
That only works if the organiser’s website actually says something. Most market pages say the date and a few photos. The page that protects people says how booking works — and what will never happen:
Stalls at our Christmas fair are booked only through this page. We never take stall fees by text, private message, gift card or transfer to a personal account. If anyone offers you a stall another way, it isn’t us — please ring us on the number below.
Trading Standards in Norfolk put the warning signs plainly: an advert with no postal address, and unusual ways to pay. A real organiser’s page should make both checks easy to pass.
The fair question
devkoi doesn’t run bookings, take stall fees or police social media groups. It can’t stop anyone copying your photos into a fake post.
It builds the page people check: your real events, your real dates, how to apply, how payment works, your address and phone number — on your own web address, and updated the day anything changes.
What to do this week
If you organise a market, fair or event
1. Publish a stalls page on your own website. Every real event, its dates, how to apply and what it costs.
“Add a Stalls page: Christmas fair on 6 and 7 December, £45 a pitch, apply using the form on this page.”
2. Say how you take payment — and how you never do. The sentence above, or your own version. It protects traders before they meet the fake.
3. Put your postal address and a phone number on it. Those are exactly the things a fake can’t give.
4. Point every social post back to the page. “Book via our website” in every post means a trader who sees an offer that doesn’t say that has a reason to stop.
5. If you find a fake, say so on the page. A short, dated notice. Traders who were approached will look for it.
“Add a notice to the Stalls page: a fake post is offering stalls at our fair — we only take bookings here.”
If you trade at markets
6. Check before you pay — on the organiser’s own website. Type the address yourself. Ring the venue. Two checks, and they catch nearly everything.
7. Never pay a stall fee by gift card, private message or to a personal account. No genuine organiser needs you to.
8. List the markets you’re really at on your own site. Customers can find you, and anyone checking can see where you actually trade.
“Add a ‘Where to find us’ section: 6 and 7 December at the Christmas fair, Saturday mornings at the farmers’ market.”
A Christmas market runs on trust that happens long before the lights go up — that the pitch will be there, that the organiser is who they say, that the money went to the right place.
The fraud breaks that trust in a single message. The repair is old-fashioned: a real name, a real address, and a page that says, plainly, how things are done here.