The 50-year-old De Anza Student Body Flea Market has transitioned online after being closed for almost an entire year.

The flea market normally brings in around $300,000 to fund student programs but didn’t bring in the same amount this year because of its closure.

Mohamed Geshash, interim DASB Flea Market Coordinator, said that the flea market’s main goal is to get back in person, though it is trying to broaden its online presence.

“Being online is more of a transitional phase due to COVID and we are trying to be there for vendors as much as possible,” Gehash said. “We hope that the flea market can get back in person, of course with all (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommendations and social distancing.”

DASB President Katelyn Pan, a 19-year-old business administration major, said that the flea market’s transition has seen its struggles.

“I think that the most difficult aspect of pushing Flea Market from in person to online is marketing,” said Pan. “When it’s online, it seems a lot colder because it’s hard for us to generate hype around the event.”

Although COVID-19 is the biggest obstacle the flea market faces, Geshash said the pandemic has allowed it to reevaluate itself.

“All of the previous vendors that we had before (the pandemic), they are able to post their store online and have them up and running,” Geshash added. “Some of the marketing strategies we have used are publishing into newspapers.”

The DASB Chair of Finance, Grace Lim, 17, said that the DASB budget as a whole didn’t take a large hit because other programs weren’t able to spend most of their funds.

“We predicted that the flea market would earn $0 for this year,” Lim said. “We also did project that there would be unused funds from the other account(s).”

The flea market aims to get back in person this fall, but it awaits more guidance from the CDC.