I thought that after all of these years i had learned all of the questions to ask an organizer to find out if an event will be successful... Sigh... So any new event artists out there, here's another "Learn From My Fail"

If there are big corp sponsors, find out if a lot of freebies are going to be given away.

I was the only body art vendor at Wakestock in Collingwood.  Everything seemed perfect: thousands of teens & young 20's, a booth rate lowered from $1200 to $250, 3 long days of kids from mostly wealthy families. 

I just made my cost back.

The volume of corporate freebies was insane!  Beer for $0.01.  Free pop, food, energy drinks, etc... The bad: corporations were branding people for free.  Who wants to pay for unique, skilled henna body art when you can have a beer company's logo spray painted down your whole leg for free?  Another corp was airbrushing free logos.  There were dozens of logo lick-on stickers to be had.  By 4pm on Saturday people were just asking me if i was the booth with free body spray painting.  Too many freebies, no one wanted to pay for anything.  Sunday was rained out so i packed up & left. 

I hope this fail helps some of you out there in the future….