Directing a Craft Show - Part 3 - Guidelines and Applications

This is a continuation of the series of posts on directing a craft show. By the time you get to this part in the process, you should have a venue and figured out how many vendors you can host. See my post How to Direct a Craft Show pt 1: The Space. And you have talked to your group and gotten a committee or at least some people to help and approvals, etc. Read about talking points and prices, etc. in this post How to direct a craft show part 2.

Before you start advertising for vendors you have to have an application and vendor guidelines. You CAN do a Google search for craft shows and copy someone else's guidelines. However, a great way to figure out your guidelines is to walk through listing your event on www.craftslister.com. This will help you decide what you want your show to be like. It will cover more than your vendor guideines and give you a really good picture of what you want your show to be like, If nothing else, you should do this with your committee so you are all on the same page.

Hint: Copy and save your answers to use on other websites, too. :-) Seriously! Copy and paste this information into a word file and save it.

This website is SO very thorough. For example, it has a place for your event address, facility name and facility description. So if your event is at the Circle-K building at the QuickTrip Fairgrounds, you can have all those details in your listing. In your guidelines, you will want to list these details and details such as what will you do if there is bad weather? (Mostly this is for rain and outside events, but in the winter you might have a policy for snow.) Walk through this event lister with your committee and make your decisions. Will it be a juried show? What will the hours be?

Once you have walked through this event lister, write up your vendor guidelines. Save them as a PDF with the date in the footer. You will most likely change them, and will want to make sure everyone has the right ones each year. Every potential vendor needs to read and agree to your guidelines before they are accepted as a vendor. You must be willing and able to hold vendors to them. [Your reputation is built on your guidelines and how well you follow them.]

When you have your guidelines you need to write an application. Make it as short as possible. Really think about each point of information you as for. Do you really need their address? Will you ever send the vendor something in the mail? Maybe not, but a second phone number might be handy. You have to decide. Again, you can look at what other similar craft shows ask for, then tweak it to make it fit your event.

Once you have an application, you have to decide how you will accept applications. Email? Snail Mail? Online?

Your show will need an email account. Even if you don't do online applications you will want to be able to field questions via email. Don't use your personal information for this. (Except your phone number if you need to.) Set up a freebie email - I suggest gmail if you want to use the form builder.

Starting out you may not have a website. You may be able to add a section to your organization's website. But that may be a lot of trouble, so maybe not. For our first several shows we used our church website and basically had a page of information. People emailed or called and we sent them an application via email. They printed it and sent it in with their check for their booth. Then we set up our own website and people printed the app and sent it in. Then we had a form so people could send the application online and pay through PayPal. There are pros and cons for each of these. Let's chat about this. (Seriously, I need to process this again myself. Feel free to comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.)

All paper - they print the application and mail it in  with their check/money order.

The POSITIVE: You don't have vendors approved and then stiff you on their booth fees. if the fees are submitted with their application, you can approve them right away. This really saves a headache! It is a mess trying to match up payments with applications.

The NEGATIVE: Vendors don't like to print applications, and getting them mailed is a pain. Vendors have to send in money before they are approved, which means you will have to return some. That is hard for a vendor. So you will field a lot more phone calls and emails. Refunds are harder (you have to get a check cut, etc.)

All online - they submit their application online and pay with an online payment method such as paypal.

The POSITIVE: No paper. No checks. Refunds are easy. Applying is easy.

The NEGATIVE: Setting this up is not so easy. (We will talk about this in another post.) Vendors will apply and not pay. You will have to watch and keep track of  the payments. Vendors who don't have access to computers can't apply.

A mixture - all applications are online but payments can be online or via mail. This is what we have done the last two years.

The POSITIVE: Vendors love it. Applying is easy. You can approve vendors before asking them to pay. 

The NEGATIVE: Setting this up is not so easy. Vendors will apply and not pay. Vendors who don't have access to computers can't apply. But the biggie is: You will have to watch and keep track of  the payments both online and in the mail.

This coming year I am going to update our website to be better for our apps & payment management purposes.  I'm going to allow vendors to apply and pay online or send in the application with a payment. But they can't apply online and send a check in the mail. If they want to send a check they have to print the application and mail it with the check. That was a nightmare this year and we had more vendors than ever not show up. When we went back and looked, every one of them said they'd mail in a check.

[We will not be making this mistake again. We will not have empty booths and vendors moving during set up.]

Here is what we do:

We use Weebly for our website right now. Although we upgraded to a pro account, we still have a pretty basic website. If you choose to have a website, you need to make sure you have good information on your website. [I want to add more information for vendors - links to advice pages and stuff like that. I also hope to add a links page for me of links to websites I advertise the show on. As I add the ads each year, I will link to the specific ads. Hopefully...]

We used Go Daddy to register our name. For my personal website, I use Go Daddy for everything. Weebly is better for some things and Go Daddy is better for others. And I'm sure there are other companies out there to host or register. But I know nothing about them.

We used Google Docs to make our application (it is a fairly simple form) for our website. When someone applies, it sends the responses to a spreadsheet on my Goggle Docs account and sends an email notification so I know to go look at the information.

HINT: I have not made a tutorial about using Google Docs to make an application for a craft show, but there is a fairly good how to on making a form on the Surfing to Success blog: creating-google-form-to-gather-info It is written for teachers, but I think it gives enough good information to get you there!

So we have a new application that really works well. But, when I changed to this form, I didn't know how to make it tie directly to a cart system so the vendor could make the payment. Right now, I get the information and approve the application then send a paypal request for the correct amount. I know how to add a paypal button so they anyone can make a payment, but I don't know how to have it calculate the right amount. [The reason I send a bill is that we had some issues with people paying the wrong amount.] So even this many years out it is still a process and we are still learning.

Next up: Where to advertise for vendors...