For business success in Mexico, you’d better know how to sell on the streets

Long before Netflix, informal commerce boomed through the subscription model.

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The cries of Mexico’s loud, chaotic, and iconic street vendors are considered a national patrimony. Like the songbirds of a tropical rainforest, each vendor tries to attract the attention of a buyer with their own distinctive music or intonation. Each gives succinct and often catchy information of what they sell and for how much. These sounds are even stored in Mexico’s national sound archive.

Informal commerce is to be found everywhere. The Metro system, most busy street corners, in nightclub bathrooms, and in the middle of a busy road at rush hour. As of June 2025, 54.8% of Mexico’s 61.8 million workers laboured in the informal economy. Millions of them are street vendors.

Street sales are often associated with poverty—and in many cases, that is true, as the un- or underemployed hit the road to make a living—but this stereotype hides a lucrative and massive industry. The sheer numbers involved mean that some of the biggest companies on Earth have adapted to cater to the needs of these informal vendors and their clientele.

It is also a sector where many do far more than scrape by. To make real money, street vendors need grit, creativity, and an unexpected ally in the restless ecosystem of the street: The subscription model.

The original pop-up

Mexico City’s downtown area is a place made for street vending. It is the city’s commercial hub, and the floods of people who walk its streets all have money in their pocket—many to sell, most to buy. That means the streets are filled with a cacophony of salespeople. Most sell basic consumer items: sweets, snacks, an umbrella during the rainy season.

One can also find unexpected fare as well. On the pavement of Eje Central, under the shade of Mexico’s first modern skyscraper—la Torre Latino—Santos hawks watches. He’s not a stereotypical creep clutching at a trend coat. He sells out in the open, on a little foldable table covered in a bright red felt tablecloth.