Dear Event Organisers

I recently agreed to do an event having been told it was to raise money for a school. The lady complimented me on my stall and told me that other than one other trader selling beads for jewellery making, mine would be the only jewellery & scarf stall. I was happy to hear this because I knew the venue would be small and footfall not likely to be huge.

So after a full day at market, I packed up and loaded my van (which takes a couple of hours), went and had a hot chocolate and a break for an hour then drove 5 miles on top of the 40 minutes it took me to get to market that morning to the event down dark, unfamiliar lanes.

Once there, I unpacked my boxes once again and created the best display I could in the space given. After a while another lady arrived next to me and started to unpack her...jewellery and scarves! As it happened she turned out be lovely and we passed a pleasant enough evening sharing our experiences of trading but the whole point of us being there, to do business, make some money for our efforts, got lost.

There would have been no point in asking to move, I had already spent over an hour setting up, and the venue wasn't big enough to make any difference. The lady next to me also happened to sell handbags (very nice ones too) but when she looked up, another lady selling handbags was setting up opposite!

A friend of mine who sells beautiful chocolates and sweets had a stall in the next room and told me she had also been told she would be the only seller of this kind at this event. Another trader lied to, I wonder how many were.

Now it doesn't feel quite right to ask for pitch money back when the event is for fund raising for a delightful little school and it would even seem meaner to have demanded back the raffle prize. So on the day, we all ended up over a barrel so to speak.

The organiser proudly informed me they'd had around 70 people through the door. Hardly enough to go round really and certainly not enough to validate my efforts (or those of my friend who had worked at her shop all day) at a 15 hour day. I finally arrived home at 10.30pm.

The lady selling scarves and jewellery next to me told me about an event she had attended at the Forum where the organiser had merely placed a small box advertisement in the EDP to promote it. Of course it ended up very poorly attended.

So please organisers, don't lie to traders to get them to an event, be honest! Make sure traders have enough space to do a proper display, and I can't emphasise this enough PROMOTE YOUR EVENT FOR MONTHS IN ADVANCE!!!

Even with a small budget there is so much you can do, Facebook and Twitter are free, get posters created (easy enough on a computer) and put them everywhere you can think of, talk to local radio and get mentioned, ask traders to give out leaflets and promote via their social networking, put up road signs. Be inventive, you'll raise much more money that way! Otherwise, you won't have so many traders at your event next time, I for one don't repeat disasters!