Updated Dec. 9, 2024, at 8:54 p.m.

Two holiday markets, both alike in dignity, in fair D.C. where we lay our scene.

A few blocks away from the Gallery Pl-Chinatown Metro Station, the Downtown Holiday Market this year ditched its classic white tents for wooden booths adorned with pine needle garlands and boasts a new name: the DowntownDC Holiday Market. But just a 15-minute Metro ride away in Dupont Circle, the DC Holiday Market stretches across 19th St NW with a sea of white tents connected by red signs and strings of twinkling lights, once quintessential to the original Downtown Holiday Market.

Dupont’s DC Holiday Market’s aesthetic similarity to the Downtown Holiday Market’s former look is no coincidence. The DowntownDC Business Improvement District coproduced the original Downtown Holiday Market with Diverse Markets Management for 18 years. But last December, the DowntownDC BID asked Diverse Markets Management to compete to produce the 2024 market and ultimately dumped them for the Brooklyn-based Makers Show, which runs markets in New York and Boston. 

Michael Berman, the president of Diverse Markets Management, said in a Washington Post article in October that he was “angered by the decision,” which booted his annual market from their post outside of the National Portrait Gallery. But after he “ran into a brick wall” fighting the decision, he said he opted to find a new space for their market in Dupont Circle.

Gerren Price, the president of the DowntownDC BID, told the Washington Post that the BID’s decision to hire Makers Show followed “community and stakeholder feedback” about the “declining quality” of the Downtown Holiday Market under Diverse Markets Management’s leadership. 

A spokesperson for Diverse Markets Management, said in a statement to The Hatchet that due to the change in location, the DC Holiday Market is currently not able to accommodate as many vendors in their Dupont market as they had in their Downtown market but hopes to “expand its footprint” next year. They said that moving the market to Dupont Circle has also increased costs in “planning, structural changes, services and advertising” but did not specify how much the costs increased by or why. 

“The more options our local small businesses have to sell over the holiday season, the better,” they said. “One market can only provide space to fulfill its capacity, and we have an endless supply of amazing local makers anxious to show their products to shoppers this time of year.”

Now, the DC Holiday Market hosts 33 vendors in the Dupont Circle location, compared to the 70 vendors they would host at a given time at the original Downtown Holiday Market, while the DowntownDC Holiday Market now hosts more than 100 vendors.

The DowntownDC BID and Makers Show did not return a request for comment.

The rift between Diverse Markets Management and the DowntownDC BID forced longtime vendors of the former Downtown Holiday Market to make a difficult choice. While some said they opted to support the market in Dupont Circle out of loyalty to Diverse Markets Management, other vendors said they opted to stick to the Downtown location they had worked at for years.

Sonda Allen, a local gold and silversmith and the owner of the handcrafted jewelry business Turtle’s Webb, said she was one of the founding vendors of the original Downtown Holiday Market in 2005 and worked there for nearly 20 years. Following the split, she said she decided to move with Diverse Markets Management to Dupont Circle because of the “trust” she had in the company after they had built and sustained the market since its inception.

“I decided to stay with the founders of the downtown market,” Allen said. “I didn’t switch. I just stayed consistent with the people who built what the BID took from them.”

Allen said she received an email from the DowntownDC BID and Makers Show in the spring, notifying her of the change in the market’s management and attended a Zoom meeting with representatives from the DowntownDC BID and Makers Show in late May.

Allen added that she was put off by the Makers Show representatives’ “arrogant” attitude, as they wanted to celebrate 20 seasons of the DowntownDC Holiday Market, despite the fact that Diverse Market Management was the company that had managed the market since 2005.

“You’re coming in now,” Allen said. “You’ve been handed somebody’s hard work.”

Allen said she feared that the DowntownDC BID reneging their contract with Michael Berman and Diverse Market Management means that they can renege their commitment with vendors. 

 “If the BID got rid of him, with no clarifications, then who am I as an exhibitor,” Allen said. “I mean, I didn’t have any confidence.”

Shumba Masani, the owner of Canimals — a local business that transforms soda cans into elaborate animal sculptures, said he wanted to remain at the DowntownDC Holiday Market this year because he had worked at the location for at least 15 years and knew his regular customers would look for him there. He added that he only found out that Berman had started a new market in Dupont Circle after he had already signed up and paid to be a vendor at the DowntownDC Holiday Market.

“I want to do this market because I have been here for 15 years, so I tried to stay out of the politics because I know my people were gonna come here to find me,” Masani said. 

While DowntownDC BID and Makers Show vowed to offer vendors lower costs for booth rentals, Masani said when you consider the extra “hidden costs,” like parking — which used to be included in the booth rental price under Diverse Market Management — and the cost of materials, like paint and tables, to satisfy booth presentation upgrades that the BID and Makers Show requested, it averaged out to be about the same.

Makers Show charges $6,500 to $24,000 for booth rentals, depending on the size. The booths at the DC Holiday Market are all the same size and cost $8,000 to rent.

“I didn’t want to have to focus on presentation,” Masani said. “I wanted to focus on my product, my craft, right? That’s what I’ve been doing for many, many years, focusing on my craft and let the presentation just take care of itself.”

Mostafa Epy, the local owner of From Egypt, With Love — a family-run handcrafted jewelry and glass ornament business, said he operates a booth at the Dupont Circle market, while his brother operates their other booth at the DowntownDC Holiday Market to maximize their earning potentials. He said the difference in profits between the two markets has fluctuated depending on their respective foot traffic, but Dupont’s DC Holiday Market has proved to be consistently busy.

“I was worried to be here in the beginning because, you know, as a new market, it’s risky because we pay a lot for the floor, to rent the spot,” Epy said. “So it was risky but we took the decision and it was actually the right decision.”

Annika Krause, a first-year student at GW majoring in computer science, said while she enjoyed both markets, she said the DC Holiday Market in Dupont Circle was more “quaint” and offered only two food vendors compared to the DowntownDC Holiday Market’s nine.

“The DowntownDC market is bigger and it has more to do,” Krause said. “I really like how festive it is. It puts me in the holiday spirit.”

Alessia Rodriguez, a resident of D.C. for about 15 years, said she didn’t stick around at the DC Holiday Market too long when she visited last weekend, as it wasn’t as large as the DowntownDC Holiday Market but still ultimately enjoyed her time there.

“I’m very excited about the new holiday market because it’s really nice to have a wider variety of vendors to do something new,” Rodriguez said.

This post has been updated to clarify the attribution of a spokesperson for Diverse Markets Management.