Vendor Review of Naples Grape Festival 2018

It’s been awhile since I participated in the Naples Grape Festival… In fact, it’s been 3 years. So bare with me as I try to remember all the juicy details of this one. One thing is for certain, I participated in this show one year and that was all it took for me to NEVER want to participate in this event again. There’s a few different reasons why, and I remember those very clearly.

I will attempt to give you an honest review because frankly, this could have potential to be an awesome show for you.

Just a heads up, some of my links are associated with an affiliate program, which means if you click the link and purchase the item I can get a small commission at no cost to you!. Feel free to read all the boring details here.

Stats

Festival: Naples Grape Festival 2018

Location: Naples, NY – Main Street

Dates: September 29-30th

Times: Saturday: 10-6pm, Sunday 10-4pm

Admission: Free to Public

Vendor Types: Handmade, Direct Sales, Commercial, flea market

Booth: 10×10, 10×15, 10×20, 10×30

Booth Fee: $250-$750 *Prices are determined by booth size and corner spot or not

Application Due Date: July 1

Set up: You can set up Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. As it is a little difficult getting a vehicle near your space with road closures Saturday morning for parades, I recommend Friday evening set up.

Parking: Vendor parking is located across the street at the school. It’s a little bit of a walk to the festival, but not too far.

Set up

Set up was weird.

I did my usual thing, Bret and I showed up on Friday evening to get most of my booth set up. It took a while to figure out where headquarters was, and then it took awhile for the volunteers to figure out where my booth was. Meanwhile, Bret is driving up and down main street looking for a place to park in the thick traffic.

When we finally figured out my booth was located literally right in front of headquarters near the wine tent, we moved onto the next problem; where to park to unload. There were vendors, vendor vehicles, tents, people, dogs, even children everywhere! It was a scary nightmare getting the car pulled semi close to our spot to unload.

Unloading went normal. Wam-bam DONE! Instead of fighting to get out and find a parking spot, Bret and I were those jerks who left our vehicle right there near our space for set up.It seemed like just about everyone was doing the same. I had already started setting up while Bret continued to unload as usual, so by the time he finished unloading I was already half way set up. It didn’t take much longer to finish setting up.

Remember, this was three years ago. I had less stuff to set up then.

Leaving was another nightmare… While we set up, other vendors arrived to set up too, so our vehicle kinda got blocked in by other vendors and tents. Thank goodness Bret is brave and confident. He was able to maneuver my SUV between tents, trees, people, and other vehicles to get us out while I spotted for him. Once he was free, we breathed a sign of relief and headed home.

Moral of this story, setting up for the Naples Grape Festival is NUTS! Be sure you’re ready to spend extra time getting in and out.

Saturday

Saturday started out great! I was making sales, enjoying myself, getting to know my neighbors and wondering who was directly across from me because no one arrived at start time to open the tent.

That should have given me a clue that it was not going to be a nice handmade person…

Around noon, just want traffic is picking up and a lot of sales are about to happen, my across the narrow isle neighbor arrives and opens up shop and my horrible experience begins.

“GET YOUR HUSBAND OFF THE LATTER! GET GUTTER FILTERS FROM THIS COMPANY!!”

Literally every single customer that began to stop to look in my booth had this woman shouting this at them. She literally would come over to TALK to my customers about their gutters. I know she needed to make up for lost time since she didn’t arrive until afternoon, but seriously? Poaching another vendors customers?

I watched as potential customers saw/heard the gutter woman and they’d duck their heads and RACE past to the wine tent. Literally ran to the wine tent. No one stopped to browse until gutter woman roped in someone to talk gutters to. That was the only time I had customers stay long enough in my tent to make a sale. It was awful.

I ended up not making the booth fee.

I was so upset when I returned home, I almost asked Bret to come that night to pack up my booth and not return Sunday. He of course talked me out of it saying maybe she got all her leads today so tomorrow she’ll settle down. He also suggested I talked to her and ask her to not bother customers near my tent. I’m not outspoken enough to do that, I really need to work on it. It didn’t help that some point I talked to the woman and she claimed to be good friends with the organizers… Being new to festivals I did not want to be black listed, so I didn’t want to offend her by telling her to stop stealing customers.

One good thing came from this experience. I learned a very valuable lesson, my product will not do well at events where direct and commercial sale tents are mixed in with handmade vendors. I now vet all of the events I participate in so I never have to experience this again.

Sunday

Second day’s the charm, right?

After getting a good nights sleep, I was ready to take on the day and hopefully do better with sales. Once again when I arrived the gutter lady was not there yet and didn’t open until later. This time, however, a different woman opened. This woman sat back and did not ‘attack’ every human who walked by. She only pushed the product when someone looked interested. THANK GOODNESS!

Relieved, I settled into weaving and tried to enjoy the day.

Just as sales were starting to pick up with the lunch crowd, here comes the lady from the day before…. And she’s at it again. Only this time it’s worse! There were fewer people in the isle, so she had fewer people to target with her sales pitch, which meant she literally came over into my booth space to talk gutters to my customers.

Again, I am 100% sure I lost sales. It was absolutely awful!

The gutter lady was very nice, and when things were dead she asked me a lot of questions about my work. I managed to stress weave a lot that weekend. I think I ended up finishing 4 different shawls! That’s still my record three years later!

But still, I lost out on a lot of sales. Think about it, who wants to browse when you have someone pestering you about your gutters? It was like having one of those pushy sales people in the center of the mall hallway. You ALWAYS rush past them not making eye contact repeating in your head ‘don’t see me, don’t see me’ and then they spot you and you’re like ‘aww crap’ “I already have it, thank you.” As you move even faster by.

That’s what I watched potential customers do all weekend.

I did make the booth fee around 3pm on Sunday. And that was AFTER gutter lady packed up and left. That’s right, she packed up her booth around 2pm and left… the festival went to 4pm… No one seemed to notice or care. I don’t know about you, but that is just unprofessional in my opinion. You should never pack up early unless the festival committee gives the okay.

So after two horrible days of listening about gutters, it was over. Bret arrived to help me pack up and once again had to maneuver the vehicle in the tightest of spaces to get anywhere near my booth. And this was partly because I made him help me completely break down my booth before getting the car. Other vendors got their cars before starting to break down. It created a HUGE bottle neck. We ended up waiting almost a half hour before Bret could get close enough for us to walk everything to the car.

At the end of the day I knew this festival was not worth the booth fee for me to participate in ever again. Great foot traffic, horrible booth location.

Lessons Learned

Research Festivals BEFORE you commit

There is so much under this lesson that I am planning to write an individual blog post about this one. I’ll keep it short and sweet here.

Do your homework about the festival. Answer these questions before you commit your time and money.

1. Will there be direct (avon, simply being, paparazzi, etc) and/or commercial (gutters, bathtubs, etc) sale booths at the festival?
2. Will the direct and commercial sale booths be near the handmade sellers? Or do they have their own space?
3. How close are the booths? Are you right ontop of your neighbor? Is the customer walkway wide or narrow?
4. Is the festival committee organized? Do they have all their ducks in a row?
5. Can you drive near your booth for set up and take down? Is it easily accessible?
6. Is there enough traffic, advertisements for the festival to warrant the booth fee?

DO NOT poach your neighbors customers

This is the rudest, most unbelievable thing ever! We are all in this together! If you allow the customer to shop in your neighbors tent, 9 times out of 10 they will come into your tent next and buy from you too! If you push, you’re going to turn that customer away from not only you but your neighbor. That’s not anyway to make friends with your neighbor.

Since this festival, I have not run into a similar situation. I think this was an isolated incident. I was just unlucky in where the festival committee placed our booths. I still will not participate in this festival again.

Wagons, Carts, Dolly’s are very handy to have

If only we had my wagons at this event. If we’d had any kind of device that would have made fewer trips to the car, we could have loaded a lot faster. I mean I have no problem walking most of my stuff out of there as long as the car is semi close so I can keep an eye on my booth and car at the same time.

Without our wagons we had to walk one thing at a time to the car, or wait to move closer. We started out walking one thing at a time to the car. As vendors pulled out, Bret moved the car closer and closer and closer. By the time he creeped all the way to the booth location we’d almost finished packing everything. And then we had to figure out how to get the car out of that mess of people and vehicles.

Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 or so they say. Now we know for the next show.

Recommendations

Honestly, I was so upset and focused on not losing it on my neighbor, I missed a lot. I will say the traffic is absolutely amazing at this event. As in there were a few hours on Saturday when I could not see the other side of the narrow 5 foot walkway because it was so packed with people.

I’m thinking the usual suspects do well, jewelry, soaps & body products, lawn ornaments, food vendors, etc. I know the wine tent was doing great!

Reasons why I will not do this festival again:

• Direct sales, Commercial booths, and Handmade were placed side by side. I find customers believe they can ask for lower prices from handmade vendors because their direct sales neighbor is selling much cheaper things. I’m sure the quality of their items is good, it’s just not handmade which takes hours of time.
• Festival Committee organization was not very good. No one seemed to know what was going on. And no one seemed to care if vendors didn’t open when the festival opened or remain open until the festival ended. I believe this makes the festival look amateur and unprofessional. It hurts everyone’s sales.
• The booth fee is pretty high. For that price I expect a lot more organization, promotion, and better placement of handmade artists. I’ve vended at other shows for less that are way more organized and have friendly staff. They also make sure to separate direct, commercial, and handmade sellers to create a better experience for both the customer and vendor.
• Set up and break down were a nightmare! Again, not worth it.
• I barely made back my booth fee. I know a different year could change that. And this doesn’t mean you can’t make a killing. The crowds were there, just not my crowds.
• The customers were not there to buy higher priced handmade products, they’re there to drink and have a good time. I had several customers complain about my prices and try to get me to lower them to a price that would not even cover the materials I used to make it.
• There are other large, better organized, friendlier staffed, handmade only shows that happen that same weekend. It also usually falls on Alpaca Farm Days, an event I typically help Stoney Meadows Alpacas with.
• Locals were setting up tents for FREE along main street and selling all manner of items to festival goers. It makes you wonder why you spent all that money to be part of the festival, when you could have just pitched a tent along the road each day for free. Crazy.
• Smokers. The smokers were thick at this show. I’m not sure if this was because I was located near the wine tent, or just because. Cigarette smoke is hard to remove from fabric, so I always pay attention to this. Totally not an issue if you don’t sell fabric or you’re already a smoker.

Positive things about the Naples Grape Festival that could help you make your decision:

• Massive crowds! So many potential customers.
• Well established event. Just about everyone in the area knows about the event and for many, it’s a yearly tradition to attend.
• Two day event. Always better than one day.
• The Grapes are delicious! So good! And the wine! YUM!

Okay, now I’m just grasping at straws… I’m sure this is a wonderful, amazing event for some vendors. I have a very biased opinion because of my bad experience. If you had a great experience, I’d love to hear about it in the comments! Maybe one day I’ll give it another go. But for now, it is not on my list of potential festivals.

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Were you a part of this festival? Please tell me about your experience below in the comments 🙂 Remember, any thought can help a fellow vendor decide if this show is right for them. We are a community, let’s share and help each other!

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