When you vend at a show how would you handle this issue?

[steve905]

I'm a small breeder of Leos, cresties and beardies. I've sold at several local shows over the past 4 years and attended on particular show regularly for almost 6. I've probably only missed a handful in the past 6 years. I go to meet and greet friends and other breeders. Recently I've started to sell my cricket suppliers extra stock since the people who have been, have been unable to supply larger sizes. Things have gone well and I've sold out almost every show. I'm now being told by the show management that the previous "bug guy" will have sole ownership of selling this product (because he whined and complained to management). I personally believe if I buy a table and am selling legal items relevant to the trade I should be able to sell whatever the hell I want to. I told them I felt I was being discriminated against and this was going to set a dangerous precident. Now I'm feeling I'm in a tough spot my supplier has ramped up to help me out and he's got a bunch of extra crickets and I'm not sure what to do. Everthing in me says fight it and bring my bugs just not sure where this will lead. How are things handled at other shows and how would you feel if you were dictated to as to what you could or couldn't sell.

 

[OhioGecko]

That is a touchy subject. Did you OK the sales of the crickets with the show admin? Most shows make you sign a sheet with what you will be selling. The admins have to keep the peace and I know most of the shows I go to, the insect and mice feeders do have some type of an agreement with the show admin/promoter about who else or how many insect carriers are allowed and what insects they are allowed to sell at which shows. Maybe the admin has an agreement and he is keeping his word, IDK? I would ask more questions and then also think about if it could possibly damage your relationship with the admin also. You might want to present it to the admin again in another way, being positive and not defensive of course, such as not bringing them out until the other guy runs out or only bringing so many boxes. Basically providing info that you will not be a threat or taking sales away from the other supplier. Good luck and I hope you find your answers.

 

[acpart]

Most shows have a written list of rules. If there is such a list and nothing on it covers what they are asking you to do, I would recommend you contact the people who run the show again. Don't approach it like a back-seat lawyer, go with the "I'm confused about this because I can't find anything in the rules about this". That may not get you anything concrete but it may make the administrators re-think their position. I don't see why this should be a problem, though. No one tells a corn snake breeder that they can't sell corn snakes at a show because there's another corn snake breeder there.

Another thing to consider is to see if you approach the other vendor and see if you can work out something where you sell crickets in smaller amounts than s/he does (but where you're not underselling the other person if someone buys multiple lots of smaller amounts). In that way everyone benefits --the other seller will have plenty of sales of large cricket amounts and customers who only want 50 or 100 will have a place to get them.

If none of this works, you're stuck either complying or not going.

Good luck,

Aliza

 

[M_surinamensis]

No one tells a corn snake breeder that they can't sell corn snakes at a show because there's another corn snake breeder there.

Sometimes they do. Although it is a lot more common with feeder vendors, cage or supply vendors and people who deal with a higher end niche market like chameleons or arboreal boids.

Generally these agreements are beneficial to both the vendor and the promoter.

The promoter is getting a guaranteed vendor for the specific type of item on a long term permanent basis, which they can advertise and use as an anchor to attract bodies through the door- benefiting every vendor present.

The vendor benefits by being the only game in town when it comes to their specific product, they don't have to deal with the customers who will spend half a day running back and forth playing vendors off one another and bullying down prices.

These arrangements are fairly common in smaller and medium sized shows. The real huge shows obviously do not have similar restrictions, although there may be similar incentives in place where specific types of vendors are guaranteed certain benefits (like first crack at vendor space selection on endcaps or guaranteed placement near the front door or various additional access to electrical fixtures or allowed to hang banners or put up signs in places other vendors are not).

If the feeder vendor has an arrangement with the promoter, you may just be S.O.L. unless the promoter is unhappy with the existing arrangement with the other vendor and actively looking to break it.

 

[steve905]

The show as I've seen over the years has no written rules and as I've seen almost every year there are some suprises that come up. I'm not looking to have a price war....I'm just trying to offer a ,what I feel, is a better product. Why should I let somone else offer weak, some dead, low count crickets when I know mine are the exact opposite. Its kinda like animal abuse you can do something about it or turn the other cheek I'm preferring to do something

 

[acpart]

Sometimes they do. Although it is a lot more common with feeder vendors, cage or supply vendors and people who deal with a higher end niche market like chameleons or arboreal boids.

Generally these agreements are beneficial to both the vendor and the promoter.

The promoter is getting a guaranteed vendor for the specific type of item on a long term permanent basis, which they can advertise and use as an anchor to attract bodies through the door- benefiting every vendor present.

The vendor benefits by being the only game in town when it comes to their specific product, they don't have to deal with the customers who will spend half a day running back and forth playing vendors off one another and bullying down prices.

These arrangements are fairly common in smaller and medium sized shows. The real huge shows obviously do not have similar restrictions, although there may be similar incentives in place where specific types of vendors are guaranteed certain benefits (like first crack at vendor space selection on endcaps or guaranteed placement near the front door or various additional access to electrical fixtures or allowed to hang banners or put up signs in places other vendors are not).

If the feeder vendor has an arrangement with the promoter, you may just be S.O.L. unless the promoter is unhappy with the existing arrangement with the other vendor and actively looking to break it.

Good to know. I did know that some shows ask what you're selling when you apply for a table and may award tables based on what people are selling so there is a good variety, but I didn't know that a regular vendor could be told from year to year what to sell and what not to sell. I've been lucky so far in the shows where I've vended.

Aliza

 

[M_surinamensis]

It is all kind of open ended.

The promoter might advertise a certain table fee but the actual arrangements between the promoter and every individual vendor can vary wildly past that point.

Vendor 1 might be paying a higher table fee because they wanted a guarantee of a spot on an endcap or near the front door, higher traffic areas, so they offered extra money.

Vendor 2 might be paying a lower table fee because they owned a popular website or a local retail store and gave the promoter free banner ads or hung posters and left out fliers to help with advertising.

Vendor 3 might might be selling something that works as a pretty large draw (Chameleons or ETBs/GTPs, crocodilians or legal baby turtles) to get the looky loos in the door as if it were a day at the zoo, so they and the promoter arranged for an exclusivity deal.

Feeders and supplies often try for the exclusive deals too- feeder vendors because they really do not want to take any stock home with them, they want every single bug and rodent to sell then and there, often times they are a middleman and have ordered bulk feeders specifically to sell at the show, they have nothing to do with them if they are unsold come Sunday evening. Supply vendors often request it because they do not want to get into bidding wars, where a potential customer just runs from one table to the other "The guy on the other wall has the exact same thing for two dollars less than you, will you beat his price." and then turning around and doing it again until the profit is completely gone. A lot of supply vendors will pay for multiple tables and bring an entire truckload of stuff with them- and they do good business with people buying unexpected animals, so the promoter wants one there, but they aren't the same kind of attention getter as the animal vendors are.

That doesn't even begin to deal with some of the caging vendors- who are often representing a cage manufacturer in a semi-official capacity and may not even fully own the cages they are selling. Vision, for example, is more than happy to set up arrangements where a local representative brings a bunch of sample enclosures to stick on a table and hype to the public while they sell mail order enclosures on commission. Set prices mean that there is simply no point to having more than one representative at a show.

The promoter doesn't want too many people selling the necessary but boring stuff either, they are trying to build a base of customers who will attend every show, get bodies through the door for five bucks a head and break previous attendance records in order to attract even more vendors and to make sure the vendors that are present stay happy and hopeful when it comes to the number of potential customers. So the promoter wants shiny displays and exotic species and fifty thousand leopard geckos, bearded dragons, corn snakes, king snakes, ball pythons and baby turtles. Too many supply style vendors or feeder vendors are boring, it's like walking into a pet shop- the atmosphere the promoter is trying to encourage is something halfway between a trip to the zoo and the street market scene from Indiana Jones (only with fewer sword fights).

The show as I've seen over the years has no written rules and as I've seen almost every year there are some suprises that come up. I'm not looking to have a price war....I'm just trying to offer a ,what I feel, is a better product.

Same product better quality is still kind of a free market fistfight.

Why should I let somone else offer weak, some dead, low count crickets when I know mine are the exact opposite. Its kinda like animal abuse you can do something about it or turn the other cheek I'm preferring to do something

It doesn't hurt to talk to the promoter as long as you stay polite and level headed about it.

What I have tried to explain is that there may not be anything you can do about it though. If the promoter already has an agreement, an arrangement, a verbal (or written and legally binding in some cases) contract with this other feeder vendor that guarantees them exclusive rights to sell that type of product then there is really nothing you can do that will cause an honest promoter to go back on their word.

Even if the promoter doesn't have an official arrangement, they may simply not want two feeder vendors because from their perspective it is not good for hyping up the public. If this other guy brings two hundred thousand crickets and you were bringing ten thousand just to fill a half-empty table then the promoter is going to stay with the other guy and ask you to stop it. He doesn't want to lose the high volume established feeder vendor and he doesn't want two feeder vendors, so it might be in the best interests of him and of the show to cut you off.

If you stomp around yelling about how unfair it is or make a lot of threats to quit vending the show, you're trying to bargain from a weak position and making yourself a pain in the butt- you are probably the one who will be told you are no longer allowed to be a vendor.

If you want to displace the other bug guy as the feeder vendor you'd have to do so in a way that makes you the better choice- more feeders, a wider selection of feeder species, better prices, buying extra tables to hold all of your stock, somehow helping the promoter out with advertising or giving him some beneficial angle he can work with...

...but even that may not be sufficient if the promoter already has a specific exclusive arrangement with the other guy. Don't ask an honest person to break their word just because it is inconvenient for you, that is kind of scumbaggish.

 

[OhioGecko]

It is all kind of open ended.

The promoter might advertise a certain table fee but the actual arrangements between the promoter and every individual vendor can vary wildly past that point.

Vendor 1 might be paying a higher table fee because they wanted a guarantee of a spot on an endcap or near the front door, higher traffic areas, so they offered extra money.

Vendor 2 might be paying a lower table fee because they owned a popular website or a local retail store and gave the promoter free banner ads or hung posters and left out fliers to help with advertising.

Vendor 3 might might be selling something that works as a pretty large draw (Chameleons or ETBs/GTPs, crocodilians or legal baby turtles) to get the looky loos in the door as if it were a day at the zoo, so they and the promoter arranged for an exclusivity deal.

Feeders and supplies often try for the exclusive deals too- feeder vendors because they really do not want to take any stock home with them, they want every single bug and rodent to sell then and there, often times they are a middleman and have ordered bulk feeders specifically to sell at the show, they have nothing to do with them if they are unsold come Sunday evening. Supply vendors often request it because they do not want to get into bidding wars, where a potential customer just runs from one table to the other "The guy on the other wall has the exact same thing for two dollars less than you, will you beat his price." and then turning around and doing it again until the profit is completely gone. A lot of supply vendors will pay for multiple tables and bring an entire truckload of stuff with them- and they do good business with people buying unexpected animals, so the promoter wants one there, but they aren't the same kind of attention getter as the animal vendors are.

That doesn't even begin to deal with some of the caging vendors- who are often representing a cage manufacturer in a semi-official capacity and may not even fully own the cages they are selling. Vision, for example, is more than happy to set up arrangements where a local representative brings a bunch of sample enclosures to stick on a table and hype to the public while they sell mail order enclosures on commission. Set prices mean that there is simply no point to having more than one representative at a show.

The promoter doesn't want too many people selling the necessary but boring stuff either, they are trying to build a base of customers who will attend every show, get bodies through the door for five bucks a head and break previous attendance records in order to attract even more vendors and to make sure the vendors that are present stay happy and hopeful when it comes to the number of potential customers. So the promoter wants shiny displays and exotic species and fifty thousand leopard geckos, bearded dragons, corn snakes, king snakes, ball pythons and baby turtles. Too many supply style vendors or feeder vendors are boring, it's like walking into a pet shop- the atmosphere the promoter is trying to encourage is something halfway between a trip to the zoo and the street market scene from Indiana Jones (only with fewer sword fights).



Same product better quality is still kind of a free market fistfight.



It doesn't hurt to talk to the promoter as long as you stay polite and level headed about it.

What I have tried to explain is that there may not be anything you can do about it though. If the promoter already has an agreement, an arrangement, a verbal (or written and legally binding in some cases) contract with this other feeder vendor that guarantees them exclusive rights to sell that type of product then there is really nothing you can do that will cause an honest promoter to go back on their word.

Even if the promoter doesn't have an official arrangement, they may simply not want two feeder vendors because from their perspective it is not good for hyping up the public. If this other guy brings two hundred thousand crickets and you were bringing ten thousand just to fill a half-empty table then the promoter is going to stay with the other guy and ask you to stop it. He doesn't want to lose the high volume established feeder vendor and he doesn't want two feeder vendors, so it might be in the best interests of him and of the show to cut you off.

If you stomp around yelling about how unfair it is or make a lot of threats to quit vending the show, you're trying to bargain from a weak position and making yourself a pain in the butt- you are probably the one who will be told you are no longer allowed to be a vendor.

If you want to displace the other bug guy as the feeder vendor you'd have to do so in a way that makes you the better choice- more feeders, a wider selection of feeder species, better prices, buying extra tables to hold all of your stock, somehow helping the promoter out with advertising or giving him some beneficial angle he can work with...

...but even that may not be sufficient if the promoter already has a specific exclusive arrangement with the other guy. Don't ask an honest person to break their word just because it is inconvenient for you, that is kind of scumbaggish.

:main_thumbsup:

 

[steve905]

I have to say I was pleased to hear that the show promoters decided to let me vend after all the hullabaloo....I was bummer at the last show I had several folks come to me and ask for crickets. I had to tell them I didn't have any but would for the next....I'll be patient and grow my client base this is gonna be a fun lil battle....

 

[acpart]

That's good news for you. I hope it goes well.

Aliza

 

[juiceredrum]

thats B.S we are in the u.s they are playing a monoply game i would say fight it especially if its premuim crickets!!!! that is so much B>S trust your gut ,you may not win but you can sleep at night , this just feels so wrong to me im glad you prevailed !!!!