Eve,

You raised some very good concerns. Here's a few more ideas on how to absorbe the costs: a slpit between the merachant and organizer (the merchant can then redeem the coupon for half price form the organizer for example). Have sponsers of the show (this can really help defray advertising costs if one of your sponsers is a local radio station). Have the coupon attached to an iformation sheet - handy one would be a layout of the venue or interesting tidbits relating to the theme (antiques, crafts, etc) of the show - and then charge advertising for the flyer/info sheet. Set-up an area where you sell bottles of pop or water to those thirsty buyers walking from booth to booth (of course the coupon wouldn't apply to the drink items) to help recoup your costs. Those are just a few of the ways the organizer can help cover the coupon costs and you can combine any of the ideas together. Also, I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas out there.

I'd be interested in how the situation was resloved in Don's original post.

Tam

> Hi, Don --

> From a marketing standpoint, your idea is
> clearly a sales stimulant. It excited me,
> and my first thought was how I could apply
> this since I myself display at craft shows.

> My second thought, though, was this: whose
> pocket does the $3 come out of?

> The show's owner, who puts the whole thing
> together, makes money two ways: from
> admission charges and exhibitors' display
> fees. If the $3 comes out of his share, it
> could be pretty costly.

> For example, a fair-sized show would have
> about 100 exhibitors and traffic of about
> 5,000. If the exhibitors' fee were $50
> (typical for a show this size), that would
> make his total revenue $20,000. Covering
> that $3 browser buck fee would reduce his
> revenue by $15,000 and that's probably
> unfair since print and radio advertising
> costs can run pretty high. And that's before
> the cost of the venue itself, security, etc.
> The show could end up making no money at
> all.

> Having the vendors individually absorb that
> $3 sounds more fair but some exhibitors are
> always more popular than others, so
> inevitably a small percentage would carry
> the brunt of the costs. Hopefully, the sales
> volume would help offset the lower profit,
> especially if customers purchased more than
> one item. This is, of course, the ideal
> scenario and the one you described in your
> post.

> However, there are always plenty of bargain
> seekers at craft shows and these are the
> people who will want to maximize the value
> of their free $3, so they'll spend as little
> as possible (and try to dicker the price
> down, too). If they target items under $10,
> then vendors accepting those $3 browser
> bucks could not only lose most of their
> profit but even lose money on that
> particular sale. Too many browser bucks and
> the vendors would make no money for the
> show, either, and will decline to
> participate again.

> As I said, this is indeed a GREAT idea, but
> to my view there's a glitch in covering the
> cost of implementation. Dividing the cost
> equitably by raising exhibitors' fees
> wouldn't really help. In the example above,
> in order to cover the $15,000 (traffic of
> 5,000 X $3) each of the 100 exhibitors would
> have to pay an additional $150. I doubt
> there'd be many takers at that price.

> The best answer might be to raise the
> admission fee to $5 and take the browser
> bucks cost out of that. Coupled with a
> slight raise in exhibitors fees ($10-$15)
> and the cost is spread around to all with a
> stake in the success of the show.

> I'm going to mention your idea to a couple
> of organizers of local shows and see what
> they think. There should be a way to make
> this work for everyone.

> Thanks for posting such a great idea!

> Eve §:)