Wedding Woes

I'd like to pick your brains

At my little Pride, our booth space is tight and getting tighter, b/c of limitations of our location.  So, booth spaces are 10x10 for almost all sponsorship levels, with 10x20, 10x30, and 10x40 booths spaces as benefits for the big money sponsorships.

I have a vendor (and they did this last year), who basically wants to buy two of the lowest business sponsorship, so that they can have 2 booth spaces (I wasn't involved in the decision last year).  They have contacted us again, trying to get the same deal. 

For info:  the sponsorship they want to buy 2 of is $150 (so they would pay $300) and a 10x20 is a benefit to a $2000 sponsorship; this vendor is a business that also makes a lot of money at our festival, so I find this especially shady behavior from them.

My thought process is that a new vendor in that space is actually more valuable to me for future sponsorships and community interest.  I also don't think that $300 for a benefit given to a $2000 sponsorship is equal and should be expected by this festival.  I'm inclined to charge them $750-$1000.

But I'm interested in other opinions and thoughts.

Re: I'd like to pick your brains

  • So if I am understanding...they want 20x20 worth of booth space?  Do they want two booths side by side or do they want to have two booths in different locations at the event?   

    If they want them side by side, I'd tell them they have to rent a larger booth at the rate that you charge for larger booths.  If they want two separate booth locations...I think I'd go for the higher rate ($750-$1000).  
  • 6fsn6fsn member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    I was going to say if you fill the booths tell them no. Then I realized that sets a bad precedent. I'd tell them no regardless.   
  • I think that they are attempting to do what purchasers do.   They're looking at the pricing and attempting to make a deal.

    How I'd handle this has everything to do with how easy they are to work with, how much good business they bring in and what your rules state.  

    I'm far more inclined to make deals with customers who recognize that they're asking for a lot vs. those who simply do not value my time or the time of my team.   How much money they have and make wouldn't factor into this but what would factor into this would be how well they paid (did you have to chase them down for payment), did you remind them about rules and regulations, did they push the envelope and set up late or too early and break other rules?  Were they ones to offer anything to you?  Those would all be key factors that tell me how much I wanted to work something out.

    So I would consider 
    1) In the future there needs to be something stated about the booth sizes.  Put it in writing about what you can and can't do.  

    2) If they were a great vendor and easy to work with I'd consider a deal where they don't get two booths at a 2 x 1 booth price if they want to make two booths into one.   However because they were such a great client in the past, yadda yadda you're going to offer them a deal of X.

    Should they not like that deal then you can advise that you can at least offer one booth and will notify if a second space becomes available however they will not be together. 

    But above all I think future handling of the event needs to state what will and won't work or other businesses will just try to do the same thing. 


  • VarunaTTVarunaTT member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its First Answer
    edited March 2018
    We have a tiered system.  All of the sponsorship levels are named and their benefits are listed specifically and individually.  There is a note about if none of the sponsorships meet their needs, to contact us.  So, it looks like this (I'll only list specifics for the Festival):

    Equality Level -- $150
    • Parade Benefit
    • Social Media Benefit
    • Logo Benefit
    • Program Benefit
    • Festival Benefit -- Pride provides a 10x10 booth space, 2 chairs, 1 table, no tent
    • Kick Off Benefit

    and the others follow the same pattern, with increasingly larger benefits for each increased level.  Is that clear enough?  (not being snarky, there's some good brains in here and extra eyes help, so if there's something better, please let me know).  This is also followed up with the same verbiage by an immediate e-mail when we receive their app and another document with the same verbiage is attached to their invoice from PayPal, verbiage specific to their sponsorship level.

    We state we don't differentiate between "sponsors" and "vendors".  Everyone is a sponsor and they have to tell us in their app if they want a booth at the event (not every sponsor does, they just want their logo on stuff).

    The vendor is an asshole.  I was not involved in the decision last year (my co-chair simply made it w/out speaking to me and he basically caved immediately B/C the vendor is an asshole and difficult to work with and he didn't want to deal with it), but I would've refused last year just b/c the vendor is an asshole and difficult to deal with ever year.  But I didn't want that to be too heavily influencing my thought process.

    They want side by side so they can make a mega booth.

    I think I answered all the questions.

    Thanks for the various inputs, I appreciate it and will keep reading.

    ETA:  All booths can only be 10 foot wide b/c of location logistics, so it's always 10x10, 10x20, 10x30, etc.
  • VarunaTTVarunaTT member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its First Answer
    edited March 2018
    I actually have support to just straight up say no, b/c our space is so limited, that more space is a benefit for more money.

    The vendor is Pride schwag crap.  I'm not a fan and we always have plenty of vendors with that stuff. The only thing better about this one than the others is that they're local.  And last year, they were shown up HARD by a new vendor who came in that had great product and was AMAZING to work with and is regional.

    I'm really not inclined to start piecemealing the sponsorships out.  At the end of the day, all of my committee is volunteer and this is a lot of hardwork.  I need to find the balance between meeting Pride's needs and not burning out my commmittee.  Trying to keep track of piece meal packages will be hard.  Also, this is really how every other Pride I see, of all sizes, mostly does their packages.  I've only seen one that differentiated between sponsors/vendors and it's a HUGE Pride, with a paid committee.
  • I would also be clear to that vendor that past practice is not an indicator of future practices.   Again, all apologies for any confusion and you do value your business relationship with them and you thank them for all they do with the services offered and goodwill towards the community.   I would attempt to phrase things in such a way that this is an event for YOUR group and you value that they are SO invested in the community to be present for Pride - so hopefully it can help to convey the tone that this needs to be mutually agreeable here and if he wants the recognition of a two booth company he should act like it. 
  • VarunaTT said:
    I actually have support to just straight up say no, b/c our space is so limited, that more space is a benefit for more money.

    The vendor is Pride schwag crap.  I'm not a fan and we always have plenty of vendors with that stuff. The only thing better about this one than the others is that they're local.  And last year, they were shown up HARD by a new vendor who came in that had great product and was AMAZING to work with and is regional.

    I'm really not inclined to start piecemealing the sponsorships out.  At the end of the day, all of my committee is volunteer and this is a lot of hardwork.  I need to find the balance between meeting Pride's needs and not burning out my commmittee.  Trying to keep track of piece meal packages will be hard.  Also, this is really how every other Pride I see, of all sizes, mostly does their packages.  I've only seen one that differentiated between sponsors/vendors and it's a HUGE Pride, with a paid committee.
    Then I'd be quite clear especially if you have another vendor offering the same things without the headache.   


  • Can you approach it that booth space is part of the sponsorship level, and each sponsor gets to choose its level of sponsorship based on availability. It would be different if they were specifically buying boothspace only, but it sounds like you get the booth bc you buy sponsorship and benefits vary by sponsorship level. If you want the larger booth then you pay for the higher level of sponsorship that includes that size of booth. 
  • VarunaTT said:

    I think the fact that they want their two booths together is the key here.  That's the larger booth that comes with the higher level sponsorship.  Period.

    If they want two booths at the low price, they won't necessarily be together.  And then **cough, cough** I'd make sure the slots assigned for the two booths are far apart.

    I did think about that.  I enjoy living moments of pettiness in my head.  :smiley:

    Hee, hee, hee.  I'm glad I'm not the only one, lol.
    Wedding Countdown Ticker
  • VarunaTT said:

    I think the fact that they want their two booths together is the key here.  That's the larger booth that comes with the higher level sponsorship.  Period.

    If they want two booths at the low price, they won't necessarily be together.  And then **cough, cough** I'd make sure the slots assigned for the two booths are far apart.

    I did think about that.  I enjoy living moments of pettiness in my head.  :smiley:

    Hee, hee, hee.  I'm glad I'm not the only one, lol.
    There are 2 people on my board that are leaving.  They were part of a really terrible experience for me, so I'm glad, Glad, GLAD they are leaving.  I told my ED that I wanted to be the one to boot them from the FB group on the official last day.  I need my moments of pettiness where I can find them, while being all professional on the outside.  :smiley:
  • I think the fact that they want their two booths together is the key here.  That's the larger booth that comes with the higher level sponsorship.  Period.

    If they want two booths at the low price, they won't necessarily be together.  And then **cough, cough** I'd make sure the slots assigned for the two booths are far apart.

    Exactly.  They want to be recognized like they're giving more when they're not.

    Nope nope nope.   
  • Ro041Ro041 member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    I would probably tell them that, because of limited space and demand for booth space, you are only doing one sponsorship per sponsor at this time.  If they want a bigger booth, they have to pay.  If you end up with space closer to the event, you will let them know that they can purchase an additional sponsorship.  

  • This commercialization of Pride is horrific and makes me so sad.
  • This commercialization of Pride is horrific and makes me so sad.
    Dude, what? Prides are non-profit groups, they don’t run on the kindness of strangers. Do you think the parades just run themselves?
  • Thank you all.  We're not super far into the process, so I've changed some verbiage and added the one sponsorship level per sponsor.  That should take care of this moving forward (it never occurred to me someone would do this until last year, honestly.  I'm always amazed at how people try to manipulate a system that seems so obvious).
  • IMO your tier levels are out of whack and need to be adjusted for the future...  From a business standpoint, a $150 to $2000 jump is CRAZY for twice the space.  Even if they get their name printed on the T-shirt it's still an insane price differential for essentially the same exposure and they'll still sell just as much stuff if their layout is efficient.  If I was them I'd risk the two different spaces from a purely economic standpoint.  
  • MesmrEwe said:
    IMO your tier levels are out of whack and need to be adjusted for the future...  From a business standpoint, a $150 to $2000 jump is CRAZY for twice the space.  Even if they get their name printed on the T-shirt it's still an insane price differential for essentially the same exposure and they'll still sell just as much stuff if their layout is efficient.  If I was them I'd risk the two different spaces from a purely economic standpoint.  
    I actually disagree with this. Keeping a basic space at $150 makes it affordable for smaller vendors while expecting those who really want a larger space to spend magnitudes more boosts the org's bottom line without hurting those who can clearly afford it.
    image
  • VarunaTTVarunaTT member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its First Answer
    edited March 2018
    MesmrEwe said:
    IMO your tier levels are out of whack and need to be adjusted for the future...  From a business standpoint, a $150 to $2000 jump is CRAZY for twice the space.  Even if they get their name printed on the T-shirt it's still an insane price differential for essentially the same exposure and they'll still sell just as much stuff if their layout is efficient.  If I was them I'd risk the two different spaces from a purely economic standpoint.  
    I actually disagree with this. Keeping a basic space at $150 makes it affordable for smaller vendors while expecting those who really want a larger space to spend magnitudes more boosts the org's bottom line without hurting those who can clearly afford it.
    This is the very reason why.  We have a bottom heavy sponsorship struture of Pride because of various reasons (the actual location of our event, the location of my city, our committee goal to keep as many local businesses as possible etc.).  And there are 2 levels in-between the base business sponsorship and the $2K that have increased benefits in actual advertising and other things, just not in booth size.  Additionally, we provide more tables and chairs, which cuts into our profit line for each 10x10 space.  10x10 is very standard festival size space and in comparison to other festivals that run in my city, we are slightly cheaper (to attract more sponsors, being a Pride in a heavily religious Midwest city that has protesters every year is sometimes rough) and offer better packages than other festivals.
Sign In or Register to comment.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards