INSTRUCTIONS FOR VENDORS

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	CONTENTS: 1. 100% Native  2. Vendor Fee  3. Discount for Volunteers 4. Vendor Arrival Time / Setup  5. Sale Start / End  6. Tables  7. Vendor Information and Brochures  8. Number of Vendors  9. Information Confirmed Before the Sale  10. Information Needed After the Sale  11. Expected Turnout  12. Contacting Me 1. 100% Native: All plants sold at the Parkfairfax Native Plant Sale must be native plants.  Please do not bring non-native plants to the sale.  “Native,” in this case, means native to North America.  Hybrid native plants are fine.  (Please be sure to label them as hybrids.) To answer the question of “native verses non-native” for any particular plant, my first guide for identifying a plant as one or the other is Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb. 2. Vendor Fee: The vendor fee for the sale is $15, to cover my costs of promoting, preparing for, and hosting the sale. Please pay it with a check (made out to me, Scott Knudsen) so that I can more easily keep track of who has paid.  I will collect these checks at the sale.  If anything goes wrong and I do not get a check from you at the sale, please mail your check to me at:  3478 Gunston Rd., Alexandria, VA  22302. My expenses for the current sale include the truck rental, posterboard for signs, copies of the sale flyer, and copies of handouts for the information tables.  I expect these costs to total approximately $200 at this time. 3. Discount for Volunteers: Vendors should give the volunteers working at the sale a discount of 10% on their purchases at the sale.  The volunteers will wear name badges clearly identifying themselves as volunteers, and they will know to ask for a discount, so you will not have to worry about remembering who qualifies.  Anyone not wearing a volunteer badge should not get a volunteer discount. The discount encourages volunteers helping at the sale to volunteer again at the next sale, which is important since having enough helpers is crucial to the smooth running of the sale.  Thank you for providing the discount, which in this way promotes the continuation of the Parkfairfax Native Plant Sale. 4. Vendor Arrival Time / Setup: You should arrive in the parking lot by about 8 a.m.  Earlier arrival is fine.  Vendors with large displays should arrive early enough to allow themselves the extra time to finish setting up before the sale starts at 9 a.m.  Vendor spaces will be marked on the parking lot with flour.  The corners of spaces will be marked and individual spaces will be labeled "A" through "K."  See Vendor Setup Diagram to find your space and the letter that labels it.   Park your vehicle in your assigned space at the back of the lot however it best fits, leaving room for your tables and display in front of it.  Front edge of plant displays should align with the front edge of fenced riprap drainage area in the middle of the lot (on the setup diagram behind the information tables). The point is to leave a clear, 20-foot-wide space for people to walk the length of the lot in front of the vendors.  Vendors may set plants at front edge of parking lot on the grass between the lot and the street.  Set the plants on the grass, not on the pavement, to avoid blocking the walkway.  Regular tables should not be used on the grass, but low platforms are fine.  (The point is to let people easily see everything in the parking lot from the sidewalk.)  Leave room on the sides of any display on the grass for people to walk through from the sidewalk to the parking lot between the vendors’ displays.  If low platforms are used on the grass, please do not let them extend onto the parking lot where they will block the walkway.   The point is to have all displays (both on the grass and in the lot) visible and accessible to people on the sidewalk.  5. Sale Start / End: The sale starts at 9 a.m.  Vendors should wait until about 9 a.m. to start selling, but it is OK to start selling several minutes earlier if one has finished setting up. The sale ends at 2 p.m.  A volunteer will walk around at 1:30 to signal vendors that the sale will be ending soon.  All plants must be removed immediately from borrowed tables at 2 p.m.  (This is to allow the tables to be gathered, cleaned, and returned on time.)  Sales still in process can be wrapped up afterward. Vendors may still sell plants as they load their vehicles provided this activity does not block other vendors or volunteers from cleaning up or leaving.  6. Tables: I expect to be able to provide every vendor who wants to borrow a table with at least one table.  If you expect to borrow one or more tables at the sale, please be sure you have gotten confirmation of this from me beforehand. Vendors who can do so should bring at least one table to the sale to meet their most basic display needs. 7. Vendor Information and Brochures: The vendor list contains information carried over from the previous list.  If any changes should be made to information on it, please send me an email with the subject “Update to vendor list” to alert me of the changes. Copies of the list will be distributed at a table at the sale, and the list will be available on the plant sale website. For the sale, please bring as much of your own information and brochures as you can, either to display or to give out to people at the sale.  Having pictures of the plants in bloom is the #1 thing I hear about from customers at the sale.  (I hear both suggestions for more pictures and satisfaction that so many of our vendors do display pictures.)  Outreach is a key part of the mission of this sale, and the sale does draw a significant number of people who are hungry for more information about native plants.  You should expect to answer a lot of questions and to do a lot of talking and explaining to interested customers.  Lastly, please remember to have hybrid native plants clearly marked as being hybrid.  8. Number of Vendors: Eleven vendors will attend the April 2008 sale.  Nine of the vendors have been to the sale before.   A new vendor is joining our sale:  Michael Szesze, running Carnivorous Plant Nursery, based in Derwood, MD.  Please join me in welcoming him to our group! Also joining us is a local Boy Scout troop that will be selling native trees raised from seed and also coffee and baked goods.  (I'm very pleased with this new development.  They will raise money for their troop, and we will finally get a reliable vendor providing coffee and snacks!)  9. Information to Confirm Before the Sale: I will send each vendor an email confirming two pieces of information. (a) Width of vendor spaces:  The vendor spaces in the parking lot are all 20 feet deep.  (The width for the typical vendor will be about 20 feet wide.  A few vendor spaces will need to be wider.) (b) Number of tables needed:  If you need more tables than I have confirmed I can provide for you in the email, please contact me immediately to tell me how many tables you will need. 10. Information Needed After the Sale: I will contact each vendor shortly after the sale for the following information. (a) How many plants total did you sell?  (If you can’t say exactly, give your best estimate.)  (b) Of the plants sold, how many (or what percentage) of total plants sold were perennials? Shrubs? Trees?  (c) How many separate sales did you make?  (Or how many customers did you have?)  (d) What were your total gross sales? (This figure can be rounded to the nearest $100.)  About my reporting afterward, I will not share figures given to me by any one vendor with anyone else.  From the figures I collect, I will report only the aggregates of total plants sold and the collective total sales that were made.  11. Expected Turnout: So far, I am expecting the weather on Saturday to be good, and I forecast the turnout will be at least 500 people.  Signs are up all over the neighborhood, the flyer was included in our April newsletter and notice will be posted in the Alexandria Gazette Packet.  For the first time, I’ve also gotten a notice posted in the Fairlington newsletter.  (Fairlington is a large neighborhood bordering Parkfairfax.)   I know that people are passing on word about the sale to others online.  I think the plant sale website must be getting some good traffic and has a growing number of websites linking to it.  If one merely googles, without quotes, the words “native plant sale” online, the Parkfairfax native plant sale website shows up ranked number six or seven on the first page of all websites listed in Google’s results.  The results of past sales indicate that the Parkfairfax native plant sale has gained a following:  At the 5th sale on 10/1/05, about 400 people came and bought about 1,150 plants from 10 vendors.  At the 6th sale on 4/29/06, approximately 500 people came and bought over 1,500 plants from 8 vendors.  At the 7th sale on 9/30/06, we had 12 vendors.  I do not have a good estimate of the turnout or sales because my data is incomplete, but I “guesstimate” that the turnout was close to 500 people.  At the 8th sale on 4/28/07 (the best sale so far), roughly 600 people bought over 2,000 plants from eleven vendors.  At the 9th sale on 9/29/08, not quite as many people came as did to the 4/28/07 sale, but at least 500 people came to buy plants from the eleven vendors.  12. Contacting Me: home #:  703-671-8416 email:  sknudsen@earthlink.net The best way to reach me the day of the sale is to call my cell phone.  (My cell # will be sent to you in an email.)  I will have my cell phone with me and turned on from now until the sale is finished.  If you have an urgent question, please call me any time of day.   I will check my email regularly through the day and in the early morning a few hours before the sale. If you have an urgent question, though, please call me on my cell phone. (Please note that I am no longer using the email address sknudsen@iiec.org.)

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