Event Registrations & Publishing Cycles

Our new market registration system has been live for a couple of weeks now, and it seems to be working much better (particularly with mobile devices) than the previous software we used. Knock on wood, so far we really haven’t had any issues with it after the initial launch – everyone is finding it intuitive to use.

In fact, quite a few of our early markets are completely sold out. This is a good thing, as it shows that people seeking to participate in Erlanger, Collegedale, etc. are able to do so to the maximum of our ability – there should not be any unused booth spaces for these space-constrained venues – and there is still opportunity further out in the calendar, so plenty of chances for people to join in.

In order to avoid a rush, or force vendors to book several months of events in advance simply to keep pace, I am going to publish events no further than 6-8 weeks out at a time. I don’t want people booking all of June, and then deciding in April that they are moving, leaving the market for another job, whatever – that doesn’t do anyone good. Reserved Booths are designed/intended for those vendors who typically attend every week… so that mechanism is in place, and working well.

For the individual market registrations, moving forward you can expect:

  • for normal market registrations for the next month to appear around the 15-20th of the prior month (ie, by Feb 20 I should have all of March’s market dates online for registration)
  • registration links for special events will be posted to the forum, and in some cases by individual emails if an application/review process is required

River Market registrations have traditionally gone live after the annual vendor meeting, but I think we will allow our returning vendors to have first crack at them this season, so be watching for River Market availability in the next 2-3 weeks.

Chris

2 Likes

Do returning vendors need to register for each season? Or is the application fee I paid as a new vendor qualify me each year?
Thank you!
Jennifer

That’s a good question, and one we are changing the approach to this year.

You last attended in July, 2019 - which makes you an active vendor within the last 12 months. For 2020, no further action is required (you are good to go).

Vendors who have not been active within the last 12 months are being moved to Inactive status, and will need to reactivate their account to return to the market.

We’re also making one additional change which might impact new vendors starting in 2021, but I’m going to save that for the vendor meeting. Not a huge deal - mostly an attempt to simplify some things and to lessen the load of inactive vendors moving forward.