Vendors vow to fight longer fair

Deirdre Newman

Some Orange County Market Place vendors who opted to sell their wares

at the fair to compensate for a lost weekend of the swap meet say

they lost money in the endeavor.

“It was a complete flop,” said Rick Horn, whose company, Southwest

Design, sells furniture. “We even lowered our prices 20% on the last

weekend to try to generate some business. Honestly, I didn’t sell any

furniture at all.”

The fair board offered spots to vendors at the fair after it

decided to expand the fair an extra weekend to accommodate crowded

conditions. Only 85 of the 900 vendors, less than 10%, took them up

on the offer, said Tom Askew, president of the vendors’ association.

The dismal financial return has prompted some of the vendors to

say they will lobby even harder to get the fair back to its 17-day

schedule next year.

“I think we’ll put up more of a fight for them not to stretch it

out so long,” Horn said. “We’ll stand together and unite and prevent

that from happening again.”

Fair President Becky Bailey-Findley said the feedback she got from

customers about the vendors was positive.

“[Customers] appreciated the new vendors and the variety,”

Bailey-Findley said. “And because we were able to rotate vendors

three different times, customers noticed that.”

In April, Askew accused the fair board of not doing enough to

alleviate the loss of another weekend of the swap meet, which he

pegged at about $2 million. Vendors had asked for rent relief to

compensate for the missed weekend.

Board members said they were sympathetic to the vendors’ concerns,

but it would have been inappropriate and illegal to interfere with

the relationship with Tel Phil Enterprises, which contracts with the

vendors.

Instead, it invited the vendors to sell at the fair, offering two

runs of six days and one run of nine days.

Officials set up a new selling area and named it “Kids’ Alley” to

give it a catchy moniker like the “Crafters’ Village,” Bailey-Findley

said. They also added some colored lights to liven the area up at

night, she added.

But the vendors weren’t enthusiastic about the area.

“The location they gave us wasn’t really desirable,” Horn said.

“You couldn’t really see it. It was just like a bunch of white

tents.”

Others said the dip in fair attendance from last year also

dampened their sales.

“Everyone involved with the fair knew it was a terrible deal as

soon as no one showed up,” said Adam Pitale of Adam’s Polishes, who

sold at the fair for the second year in a row. “We lost $8,000 this

year.”

Askew said that 80% of the swap meet vendors who participated in

the fair were disappointed with their revenue.

“I don’t think too many of them would want to come back and do it

next year, or they would want to be in a better place,” Askew said.

Bailey-Findley acknowledged that exhibiting at the fair has its

ups and downs.

“For some vendors, it was a new experience, and like anything,

some are going to have a better reaction to it than others,”

Bailey-Findley said. “Some did very well, and some of our other

long-term vendors did not do as well.”

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.