Meet: The Carolina Classic Fair
Type of Event: Agricultural fair, second largest fair in the State of North Carolina.
Attendance: 300,000+
Affiliations: https://carolinaclassicfair.com/
Overview: The Carolina Classic Fair is the 2nd largest fair in North Carolina with an average annual attendance of 300,000. The fair runs 10 days over the first full week of October. The fair, with Cary Hester as the Concession Manager and Assistant Fair Director, took the leap into the digital world with EventHub to streamline and automate their concession and sponsorship process.
Challenge: Managing and Offering Credit Card Payment
Before Covid, but particularly after, Cary’s team understood that their Fair Vendor Management needed to change. Accordingly, allowing an online payment option was necessary. They knew, centralizing their application process for Vendors would result in a smoother process for vendors and county staff.
Cary enjoys the ease of the setup and use of the payment gateway. “Being able to see the documents, check them off, make sure everything is great and the information of whether they have paid or not.” The practical and central way of communicating with Vendors is a favorite. “Being able to message them and say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t portray your vending spot the best it could, do you have a different picture’…”? It all allows Cary to support the Vendor’s success even further.
When it comes to the submission of documents, The team saves time by receiving accurate and quality information in the application process.
Before, Cary’s team had been manually managing the entire vendor application process, from in-person applications, check payments and manually creating maps. “In the past, I would get text pictures of their documents and struggle to figure them out. Now with EventHub it helps them to send the best version of their documents easily,” says Cary. Unquestionable, using EventHub was a big leap for change!
EventHub – A Decision and Commitment
Cary and Rachelle met EventHub Director of Business Development Carla at the Florida Federation of Fairs in Naples. Their personalities immediately clicked. “This is one thing to streamline our process that is wonderful,” says Cary.
Cary mentions how her long time experience with the fair gave her the confidence to know this vendor management was a “no brainer”. The platform provided an easy-to-use, centralized process to be created, which all staff could streamline and manage. The county staff had the onboarding support to answer any Vendor questions and concerns. This enabled them to walk vendors through the changes, resulting them being at ease and positive about the change. Being able to get payments with the applications has resulted in saving hundreds of hours in back and forth phone tags, which has been a joy for Cary.
For those vendors who require extra support, “It’s been a very smooth process. I have taken the time to teach the vendors how to use the platform instead of manually inputting the information, it adds to my workload if I don’t teach them how to do it.” Besides that, she also lets them know that many others fairs are also using EventHub. Cary noted that although she had to help some older vendors initially, they’ve since picked it up confidently.
Additional Benefits and Using the Interactive Map
Cary was particularly excited to see how the use of the interactive map within the fair Vendor Management platform made her life “so much easier.” Specifically, vendors have the opportunity to see the layout of booth spaces and pick their top choices. Cary mentions, “[The map] has gone over extremely well. The vendors enjoy seeing it, knowing where their place is going to be, the majority of them are worried about getting the same space from last year, now they can quickly see it!”
At any time they can easily use the platform to manage the booth spaces and change, approve or reject placing requests based on changes as they happen. “They enjoy seeing their booth, while I have the final power to edit as we need to.”
Another major revelation by Cary: “Revenue is higher, not just from new vendor and sponsor leads but because people have paid in advance. As a very small division (of one) this has saved us hundreds of hours in outreach”.
Conclusion
The Carolina Classic Fair is grinning big, managing their entire fair vendor process through EventHub. They are saving hundreds of hours, increasing revenue and reducing errors and repetitive tasks. The team is looking forward to seeing all their vendors and getting more feedback during fair!
CLICK HERE to request a demo via Zoom walk-through on how EventHub can help your festival, expo, or fair. For another fair story, learn about the Big Iron Show HERE.
Featured Customer
Assistant Director, Cary Hester, Carolina Classic Fair. View their event partnership opportunities at https://eventhub.net/events/Carolina-Classic-Fair-2023_3757.
