"Kenni Judd" wrote in message
...
All of which means
that vendor fees keep going up -- I WISH it had been 10 years since I'd
seen
a rate hike!
[Although honesty compels me to say that since everything else in the
world
seems to be going up (except the price of blooming orchids), if you
haven't
had one for 10 years, you're probably overdue .... ]

Hi Kenni,

Around here we have two types of shows. The first is much like yours in
that the society sells sales tables. The cost of tables at these shows have
risen like every thing else over the years.

In the Mid Atlantic area we also have a second type of show, the commission
show. They are part of the legacy left by Merit Huntington. Instead of
vendors taking money, the society runs a central checkout. The society
collects money, handles sales tax, processes credit cards, packs the
purchases, and provides culture info (thus the booklet Al was talking about
for the DC show). Instead of receiving a fixed table fee, the society takes
a percent of the sales (20% in most cases). These shows are cool in that a
society's financial success in not measured by the number of tables they
sell and the amount they charged for them, instead the society's financial
success is measured by how successful the show was for its vendors. The
society is directly rewarded for advertising the show and getting out the
people.

When one of these shows is very successful, the 20% commission I pay is much
higher than what I would have paid at a flat fee show. On the other hand,
if people fail to show up for a show (a tropical storm the weekend of the
show) I end up paying less for my space than I would have if it had been a
flat fee show. Both risk and reward are shared by the society and the
vendors. As long as the show's sales increased over time, so did the amount
I paid to the society. It is not like my fees for these shows have not
increased, over the years the societies and their vendors have built up some
very successful shows. It is just the 20% commission rate that has remained
constant.

Pat