How Experienced Vendors Choose Events

Choosing the right event is hard. That's the honest answer.

You can’t really learn how to pick events until you’ve done a few — and most vendors never look beyond their local township, city, or county. If you live somewhere rich with opportunities, the instinct is to do as many events as you can and see what sticks. When you’re starting out, that’s almost exactly what you have to do: vend in different places, at different events, before you start to understand what works for you. Because event success isn’t just about your product. It’s about the community you’re vending in.

A wealthy neighborhood and a working-class neighborhood give you completely different customers. A family-oriented suburb of single-family homes is a different market than a downtown full of apartments, condos, and transient workers.

Even when you find a good fit, event days will vary wildly. The local market I vend at has different crowds every single weekend. Some weekends the age range skews older, some younger. Some weekends it’s tourists, some it’s sports fans. Some weekends my regulars are out watching a football game. Holiday weekends are typically terrible for me.

You won’t really know where you fit until year two — and usually it takes longer than that to start recognizing patterns. It comes down to time and investment. And when you do start choosing events deliberately, it comes down to three things:

1. Distance

2. Cost — booth fees, parking, and any required commission

3. Whether you can establish a baseline ROI, because only then do you have empirical data to help you adapt

The number one metric is sales. Did you make any?

This is where it gets tricky, because what you sell has a huge impact on which events work for you. Craft-only markets generally treat craftspeople better than street markets with a wide product mix. Art festivals treat artists better than craft markets. A produce farmer at a combination craft-and-farmers market won’t do as well as the same farmer at a dedicated farmers market.

Most vendors think they’re signing up for a six-hour event ... They aren’t. Depending on drive time and setup, a six-hour vending day can easily be thirteen hours door-to-door — loading inventory, driving, setting up, working six hours, breaking down, driving home (or to your warehouse), unloading. That’s a typical day for me, not an unusual one.

If I earn $100 at a $100 event, I worked thirteen hours for free. If I earn $200, my profit for the day is $100. Do the math. That’s not a good day.

After five years of vending, I can count my truly great days on two hands. My average day is “Paul works for free.” A lot of vendors fall into a trap of calling these “marketing days.” You will have them, and visibility is crucial, but your bills will not get paid.

The second thing that matters is what it’s like to work with the organization. Are they organized? Do they communicate? Are the staff easy to deal with, or difficult? You’ll find the full range out there, but the difference between a horrible day and a great one — even when sales are mediocre — often comes down to how the organization treats you during load-in, setup, the show, and tear-down.

The event needs you. You don’t need the event — there will always be another vendor to fill your spot. Make the event work for you, not the other way around.

So if they’re hard to work with, if they don’t market the event, if they don’t treat vendors with respect, if they misrepresent who they’re booking, or tack on fees just to bleed you — that matters. Don’t work with events that treat you like a dollar sign. And if they’re charging $350 a booth, you’d better be making real money.

Breaking even on a $350 event is not a good day. It means you had to deplete your inventory just to pay your invoice — and the loss cascades down your supply chain, because the time and materials that went into making those products are gone too. It means none of your expenses were covered — effort, time, materials, production, gas, parking, lunch, warehousing, website fees, business cards, nothing… except the vending fee.

Organizers and vendors aren’t taking the same risk. Organizers make most of their money before the gates even open. Vendors only make money if customers buy something.

Experienced vendors eventually stop chasing every event they can find and start making deliberate business decisions. They know their customers, understand their costs, and recognize that a full calendar doesn’t necessarily mean a profitable business.

Selling at markets is a business. Choosing the right events for your product(s) is one of the most important business decisions you’ll make.

Next: How to Evaluate a Market Like an Experienced Vendor