By Leigh Owens
A Renaissance Faire is expected to have a colorful cast of period performers, an immersive atmosphere, and merchants with relevant goods. Faire vendors are on the lookout for where they can join in the revelry and hopefully make a profit.
The difference between choosing your Renaissance Faire and another depends on opportunity, appeal, and communication.
Of those three, communication is the most important. No matter how fun your Faire is, if vendors feel as though they were confused, misled, or didn’t understand expectations, they are going to have a bad time.
Even if your Faire offers an excellent opportunity for vendors to make a profit, they’re going to have extra stress and may lose profits if there’s a major breakdown in communication. You can offer better communication when you are better organized, and you can arrange for better organization with the help of a ticket manager, such as Stride Events.
Let’s break down Opportunity and Appeal and remember that each point must be properly communicated to your vendors. Using clear, concise, and direct communication is best.
A vendor needs to balance cost and revenue. The biggest costs to the vendor are registration fees, rentals, and possibly what cut of the profits the Renaissance Faire takes. This is of course not counting other major business expenses that come before the Faire.
To attract vendors to your Faire, you will want to construct a reasonable balance for them. You will also need to clearly communicate each feature of that balance so they can decide what’s best for their business.
You will also need to address what kinds of goods are permitted. Your vendors will also benefit from an idea of your expected attendance, and what other vendors you are hosting, or anticipate to host.
A smaller Faire is not as likely to be the right place for a seasoned veteran with a large store and following, just as a large Faire is likely to be overwhelming for a newer vendor. Start by assessing which vendors you expect to attract based on the size and length of your Faire.
Registration fees will reflect attendance cost and booth/tent space as well as security. If you have other amenities available (such as electricity), you can consider rolling that into the fee, or offer it as a separate extra charge. If it’s included in the fee, itemize it.
Whether or not you also take a cut of the profits should factor in the size of your Renaissance Faire and the vendors you expect to attract. Smaller and newer vendors simply won’t have the customer base to make the profits they need to bring in a worthwhile cut, let alone pay it.
The space for a booth or tent is already accounted for in the vendor registration fee. However, having space for a booth or tent and having a booth or tent are two different factors.
You will need to clearly communicate requirements for a vendor’s space. This will include aesthetic requirements - there’s a big difference between a modern camping tent and a pavilion! However, it will also include safety requirements, such as fire resistant materials. Booths also require this information for decorations and other elements the vendor brings.
If your Faire has space for tents, you will need to ensure you have tents for rent. You will need to list the details, availability, and cost to your vendors. If your Faire only uses hard structures, your vendors will have to rent booths from the owner of those structures.
There are two general categories for products a vendor might sell. The first is handmade goods, and the second are resale goods. Your vendors need to know what you allow and what constitutes “handmade” and “resale”.
How much of the product has to be made from scratch to count as “handmade”? If a vendor purchased old hardcovers or jars, for example, and modified them with clay, etching, new labels, glued on trinkets, and so on, does this count as a handmade good, and how extensive do the changes need to be to count?
If the vendor has a 3D printer and used their resources to print an STL they did not themselves create, do you consider this handmade? Are there modifications to the STL file or the printed product that will make a difference?
What limitations will you have on edible products, if any? Are there any more specific categories of products you do not wish to see at your Faire? Supporting your vendors includes clear communication on whether or not you support their products.
If every vendor is selling replica weapons, not only do the vendors suffer from the saturation of the market, the Faire suffers from the lack of variety.
While it may be more difficult to do, if you can communicate to your potential vendors what vendors are already signed up, you can help vendors make wise decisions about bringing their wares to your Faire.
A jeweler or a honey salesperson who sees the Renaissance Faire already has one (or two, if a larger Faire) and decides to look elsewhere is benefiting themselves, yes, but your Faire as well.
You can easily keep track of what categories of products your vendors sell when you use Stride Event’s product management tools, which allow you to group vendors and products into easy categories.
Rennies go to the Faire because they love the Faire, whether they’re recurring patrons, performers and cast, employees, or vendors. In the case of the last three groups, they are still working, and work is always work. But the idea is that the work still offers the benefit of immersion and fun, even if it’s also difficult and requires effort.
Knowing this, the environment and immersion you offer to everyone at the Faire, including those who are working, will make a difference as to how much a vendor wants to attend your Faire.
There are also aspects of the appeal of your Renaissance Faire that the vendors can influence. You will need to communicate your expectations for your standards to potential vendors.
Vendors are part of the immersion for your guests. This means that their standard of dress and speech is as important as their choice of wares and decorations.
Your vendors need clear guidelines on what aesthetics are and are not allowed. This includes how strictly historically accurate their clothes need to be, and what kinds of characters they may portray. Are fairies, pirates, gremlins, or other non-historical or non-period or non-Elizabethan entities allowed? Are they encouraged?
Dress is only half the costume. Using language that is out of place at the Renaissance Faire can break suspension of disbelief instantly. Many Faires require all staff of any kind, including vendors, to attend Elizabethan Speech workshops.
If you want to either run your own workshop, or utilize a third party workshop, provide the dates of those workshops and any additional instructions to your potential vendors.
Any requirements for workshops should be immediately visible and easy to understand for vendors.
Vendors are looking for Renaissance Faires at which to sell their wares. They will choose yours based on if your resources and expectations and costs are clearly communicated to them. However, there are a few other factors.
The timing of your Faire matters. If it’s at the same time as their normal venue or otherwise has a bad schedule, you will get less of everything. Patrons, performers, cast, and vendors. This is especially true if you hope to attract Rennies who travel the circuit. Pick the timing of your Faire wisely.
And most important of all, awareness. Even if you have excellent communication as far as your rules and resources, you will not get any vendors if your vendors don’t know you exist. The final piece to good communication is good marketing, communicating to everyone of your availability.
