Coordinating Merchandise and Retail Vendors for Music Festivals.

Music festival site vendors provide an essential revenue stream for organisers with sales of general retail and merchandise requiring as much attention as food and beverage sellers. What are the key processes and operational considerations needed to organise these vendors that maximises revenue for both festival organisers and the sellers involved.

A large-scale music festival could have the capacity for hundreds of vendors including both food and beverage and retail. The coordination of all these vendors requires meticulous planning to ensure an enhanced festival-goer experience as well as maximising sales revenue for every vendor. What are the steps involved for management of the retail and merchandise vendors.

Application Process and Documentation.
A popular music festival that attracts large volumes of festival-goers will always be attractive to potential vendors with a captive audience producing great sales revenue opportunities. Vendor pitch spaces are limited, and festival organisers will usually run a formal application process where each vendor will be assessed. This may involve considerations for demographic fit, eco-friendly product range, price range and previous event experience. Once organisers have selected the successful retail vendors a formal contract is agreed that includes details like pitch size and fee, payment terms, revenue share deals plus health and safety and insurance documentation. Other key details will be the vendors requirements for electricity, pitch shell systems plus their details for vehicle and staff access.

Site Layout Planning.
Organisers invest much time in planning their festival site layout to maximise festival-goer safety with a logical placement of stages, camping zones, toilet facilities, food and beverage zones and retail vendor zones. There will be preferred pitch spaces for retail vendors depending on anticipated festival-goer foot traffic with the best placed pitches attracting the highest fees. A logical placement of retail vendors is essential to make it easier for visitors to find what they're interested in so clustering by type of product (clothing, arts and crafts, non-product services) is necessary.

Logistics and Accreditation.
Organisers often use event management software (like Festival Pro) that enable the planning and documentation for all retail vendors. This software contains electronic versions of contracts, payments and infrastructure requirements along with load in and load out schedules. Vendors will need to supply details of all staff that will be required on site along with vehicle registrations as part of the accreditation process. The access passes are issued in advance and are required for the vendors to gain access to the festival site. Organisers will often specify the permitted operating hours for retail vendors and will coordinate with them regarding closing times so that overnight security can be provided.

Official Festival and Artist Merch.
Festival organisers will usually have their own merchandise range of clothing and other related products (T-shirts, hats, hoodies and posters) which forms another revenue stream. This official festival merchandise will be sold using the best pitch spaces available, although they will need to balance this with potential pitch fee revenue from an interested vendor. Other official merchandise can include artist’s own products and organisers may allocate a specific retail zone for them, but it is not unusual for artist's merchandise to be sold alongside official festival merch. These official merchandise pitches are run by the festival staff or volunteers and if they are also selling artists merch a revenue share deal is normal practice.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

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