What if everyone followed the rules?
Transporting your merchandise between your vehicle and spot can the most difficult part of a show day, especially now that shows are indoors for the winter and the hauls longer, winding down long school corridors. Most promoters give vendors the standard instructions to not start setting up until fully unloaded & your vehicle moved to a vendor parking area and to not pull your vehicle back to be loaded until you are completely packed up and ready load and go. If these instructions were followed by everyone, would the carry really be easier for most? I think so. I’ve seen it come true at events were people follow those rules. I’ve also seen my share of free-for-alls that had elderly crafters lugging furniture across a parking lot because some ignorant shmucks parked by the door before they even started packing.
Ideally, every vendor wants to park immediately in front of the closest entrance to their spot and want to leave their vehicle there all throughout the show so as to guarantee a short haul for re-loading. Unless there are very few vendors or an enormous number of entrances, expect to have to referee the unloading and loading process and moving of cars, unless you are employing another system like carry helpers. Most indoor events do have multiple entrances for vendors to use for their haul. If this is the situation at your venue, arrange before the event to have all those entrances available, unlocked, to you for the show day. Also, if the school or venue has pushcarts, make sure these are made available and not locked in a storage closet.
There are a few shows my parents and I do were they have carry helpers. Some school shows have students on hand before and after the show. They help carry items from the car to your spot, then later, back again. Not all shows offer the back again service though. Another show we do has 12 men that unload and load cars, each all at once, and carry everything to your spot. Vendors simply drive their vehicles up and wait in line for their turn. This is a fantastically helpful service that should be duplicated! Vehicles are unloaded in minutes, and vendors have more time and strength to setup. This also makes it harder for a vendor to decide to leave his vehicle in front of a door or out front at all, making more parking available for customers. A few small teams with pushcarts could probably build do wonders! Even build pyramids, wait they did, no? Or was that the aliens? Cats? Alien cats!?!
Come packup time, you will almost inevitable have some vendors pull their vehicles close, long before having their stand torn down. It does seem that an announcement asking vendors to not do so, with an explanation of why, over the PA system near show end does do some good. I can’t think of any other preventive measures, and looking for violators and asking them to move their vehicle would be just about the only post measure coming to mind. This is one of those areas, like highway onramp merging (http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/seatraf.html), where all benefit if everyone follows the rules, but all suffer if a few are greedy and selfish. (more amazing traffic wave physics info: http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html) Some shows stick stickers on windshields upon arrival to tag vendor vehicles to later be watched for in customer parking areas or for early pull-ups. Violators may not be asked back, but if they don’t want to come back anyway, realize you will have no leverage and so no control.
If there are carry out helpers, it is especially important to not bring your vehicle around before you are totally packed up, tables and all! When 10 kids come by and pick up nearly every package you have in one fell swoop, you could still have a while to go on your last items or displays, meanwhile the majority of your boxes are sitting on the curb. No real danger exists to them, but another person, who is entirely packed up, could be having their items carried out to them as they pack their car and go on home, leaving a spot for you to pull in once you are ready. The setup and packup time varies so much, certain vendors need 3 or more hours to setup, while others with one table have arrived and successfully setup 10-15 minutes before the show opens to the public. Same for packup, my parents and I are usually packed within 40 minutes, but looking around the room then usually yields a vista of not only many already entirely vacated spots but also some stands still almost displaying a nearly full setup, yet the owners are packing steadily and surely.
Promoters, please include directions and a sketched out map to the event venue with all confirmation letters. A spot number and layout map should ideally be included as well, otherwise expect every arriving vendor to have to go through the where’s Waldo routine to find the promoter described only by the color of their shirt and as having a clipboard…. Signup tables are a great alternative, how rarely I see them though. Also, get there early. I’ve sat in many school parking lots w/ my mom wondering if we were at the right place, only to have the promoter arrive late to unlock the doors to let the few early, yet on-time, waiting vendors in. These same promoters usually don’t send maps or have signs out the night before to find the location by vendors coming from 100 miles away and with no idea of the towns layout. Please make it easier for us vendors to find you while half asleep!
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