#HTE

Pop-Up Event Showcasing Made-in-USA Goods Clears Up Vendor Accounting Discrepancy

Last month we wrote about American Field, a traveling pop-up event that showcases “the best of American-made brands.” Since some of you entrepreneurs in our readership could benefit from getting a booth at AF’s events, we broke down the numbers in their post-event reviews, to give you a rough idea of sales; but some calculations using the supplied figures did not add up.

To refresh your memory, here’s one of the AF graphics we referred to, with our original copy below it in italics:

It would be nice if they provided just a bit more detail for clarity’s sake. The math doesn’t add up, for instance, on the Total Vendor Revenue of $236,000 spread over 118 vendors; they have the Average Revenue per Vendor at $1,200—but $236,000 divided by 118 actually comes out to $2,000. That leaves $94,400 unaccounted for, which is a bit too big to be a rounding error.

My first thought was that they were subtracting the price of the booth rentals, but that doesn’t work either: Looking at the 2016 Vendor Contract, the smallest booth you can rent in Brooklyn is a 10’ x 10’ that rings in at $1,250.

Thankfully Mike Stone, American Field’s Community Manager, reached out to us to explain the discrepancy. Here it is, in Stone’s words:

“The numbers discrepancy on the Brooklyn 2014 info sheet, which shows two different averages, is a result of two different ways that we estimate vendor revenue. The first way is via self-reporting; we ask all vendors to give us their feedback at the conclusion of the event including their revenue to whatever degree of accuracy they are comfortable with.

"The second is via our partnership in 2015 with Square payments, which allowed us some geographical data about how many sales happened over the course of the event in our location.

"Neither of these estimates are perfectly accurate representations of total vendor revenue, but we include them so that potential vendors can understand the amount of buying that goes on at our events.

"These should have been cross-checked to match up on the info sheet, but instead showcase two results. In the future we’ll include more clarity as to how we calculate our numbers, as they are intended to be a helpful tool for our vendors and members of our community and not a point of confusion.”

Hopefully that clears it up for any of you who were thinking of applying for a booth but left uncertain by the numbers, and hopefully the data sheets from future AF events will make things even more clear to potential vendors.

Speaking of future events, the remaining American Field showings for this year are:

Washington, D.C.

Oct. 15-16

Atlanta

Nov. 12-13

Nashville

Nov. 19-20

Brooklyn

Dec. 3-4