CITY PERMITS

In many events, promoters have raised their booth fees and a lot of them come up with these 'add-on charges.' Many now require 'city permits' and fees range from $25-$50 and up. A few years back, you hardly ever saw this, but the promoters AND city governments want to extract as much money out of us as possible. There are cities that require a 'police permit' or a 'peddlers permit' and that can run from $25 and up. You provide them with your driver's license, social security number, name, address, etc., and they run a police check on you as if you are a criminal. It's degrading, I think.

Of course, when you are starting a business, you know what you are going to sell and naturally, have your supplier lined up.  My first business was basically considered an 'at home' business where we made our things and sold them at Arts & Crafts Shows.  Since this was at home, we weren't allowed to sell at home and that is something I have never done and for numerous reasons.  I just don't like the idea of having strangers coming to your place of residence.  You don't know whom they are or what they did or how they killed, kidnapped, stolen from, etc.  That was a complete no-no with me.

Filing a Ficticious Name Statement.  The first thing that you need to do is to go down (or do it through the internet) and get yourself a name for your business.  You need to do what is called a 'ficticious name search,' whereby you search in your area for businesses that might already have the name you wish to have.  When you are successful, hopefully with the first one, you will then have to do the paperwork.  File it with the County Recorder so they have a record of it and they make sure that you will pay the appropriate fees.  In the coming weeks, they will place a classified ad in a local paper stating the particulars of the ficticious name you have chosen.FfF

Believe it or not, there are people or businesses that like to search and find people who have just filed the Ficticious Name.  This is a public record, unfortunately and is available to anybody and everybody.  There is a 200 percent chance that you will receive correspondece from a 'company' that specializes in placing the ficticious name notifications in newspapers and THEY CHARGE A FEE FOR THIS.  Their cover letter will give a long description of what they are doing and the importance & significance.  They will try to make you feel like you are going to the slammer if you don't post these notices in a bunch of papers.  The County Recorder already fulfilled this requirement and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FURTHER THAT YOU MUST DO.

They do ask for a fee for their 'services' and you do not need this to be done.  Unfortunately, there is a high percentage of people who get taken in by this.  DO NOT REPLY.  DO NOT PAY.  Matter of fact, that is the first and last time you will hear from that particular company.  You could receive letters from other businesses that supposedly perform the same service and it may even be worded differently, advising you in a more threatening manner.  Filing a complaint over this is useless and I have no idea with whom you would ever complain to.  For your own self satisfaction maybe you could fill out the form with bogus information, making sure that there is nothing relating to you that they can trace back and mail it out to them.

I believe that you have to 'renew' your ficticious name every four or five years.  The fee for the statement is nominal, something like $25.

There are a lot of darn good promoters out there and are easy to do shows with.  Everything runs smoothly, like clockwork.  However there are some real sneaky devils out there and I'd like to give you some insight to many of their tactics. 

The cost of doing shows has been rising and our net profits are going down. Gas prices have really killed us and we all are cutting back on shows we have to travel distances to.

JURY FEES

Of course a lot of them have 'jury fees' where you send in your application with photos, etc., and they jury you. I admit that it is important to screen out undesirable merchandise and if you are running a quality Arts and Crafts Event, then I really understand. However, a lot of the promoters are following suit and charging you for this in order to collect more money from us. This fee can range from $20 to $50. What bothers me about this is that these fees are non-refundable. You don't get the money back if you are not accepted, which is definitely wrong.

Now think about this. If 10,000 vendors send in applications with a $30 jury fee, then the promoter has collected $300,000 for doing absolutely nothing. Some just take your application and pictures and put them in an envelope. They put on your address and place a $.42 stamp on the envelope. Ahhhhh. That's a NET PROFIT DEAL..... Some promoters can make a nice living off these fees. The double whammy on this is that they are accepting these jury fees even after they have been filled up. They don't even look at the pictures, so there was actually NO JURYING. Do you think that this is legal?

FORCED CANOPY RENTALS

All of us vendors do have canopies, etc. Another gimmick is for promoters to force you to use a canopy that THEY HAVE RENTED from some rental company. Of course, we all have canopies, etc., but many of us prefer to use our own, since ours are easier to set up our displays in. More so, we are being charged one way or another for these rental canopies. You have promoters who order up a hundred, two hundred canopies for a show. They naturally get a good 'rental rate' on these and then they charge perhaps, double what their cost was. That is just another way for them to get money out of vendors.