Festival Season Prep: What Sells and What Doesn’t
Three young women laugh together while wearing sunglasses at a carnival.
Music festivals draw vast crowds celebrating culture and entertainment. These mass gatherings also attract legions of vendors capitalizing on captive shoppers in party mode. Smart businesses can earn small fortunes clearing festival inventory if they select the right mix of impulse merchandise tailored to events. Other items will be dead weight wasting precious booth space. This festival season prep guide explores proven sellers along with categories that tend to languish unsold.
What Sells Well at Festivals
Portable Essentials
Items easily carried while navigating festival grounds disappear fastest. Attendees travel light between stages and amenities, so products addressing on-site needs get snatched up quickly. Portable phone chargers become lifelines as social media documentation drains batteries. Reusable water bottles mean staying hydrated without endless trips to refill stations. Small crossbody bags keep valuables secure yet accessible during all night dancing. Anything compact, practical and mobile flies off shelves.
Trendy Accessories
Festival fashion prioritizes flashy looks as attendees model the latest music subcultural styles. Retailers can tap insatiable demand for on-trend sunglasses, hats, watches, jewelry, bandanas, temporary tattoos and face/body glitter. Wholesale sunglasses vendors should offer event-friendly options like vibrant frames with string attachments. This is according to the experts at OE Sunglasses, also known as Olympic Eyewear. Fun costume pieces and novelty items also thrive. Impulse accessory purchases are festival staples.
Food and Beverages
Festival crowds build fierce appetites after hours of dancing and partying. Yet most struggle to find affordable concessions amongst the event’s restaurants and bars. Vend healthy packaged snacks, fresh fruit, sparkling water, iced coffee and other portable picks-me-ups. If regulations allow, coffee carts and adult snow cone stands promise instant customer magnetism. Capitalize on ever-present hunger and thirst by providing quick bites that recharge crowds between acts. Place them near restrooms and transit routes traveled regularly.
What Doesn’t Work at Festivals
Bulky Items
Traveling long distances and navigating densely packed festival grounds means attendees strictly limit baggage. Few will haul cumbersome wares far without vehicles. Stands selling larger goods like chairs and hammocks look cool, yet rarely move units. Even lawn games gather dust when patrons must carry awkward boxes between stages all day. Vend bulky gear at own risk.
Big-Ticket Items
Impulse shopping patterns at festivals lean toward smaller purchases rather than pricier investments. Crowds living moment to moment amid carnival atmospheres think fast food, not fine dining when grabbing merchandise. Higher dollar goods like artwork, collectables and top-shelf liquor gather more interest than actual buyers. Keep prices modest by selling cheaper consumables.
Perishable Inventory
Vendors assume hungry partiers crave fresh snacks after altered states wear off. Yet perishable foods often turn into waste amid inconsistent sales and unreliable refrigeration. Weekend blowouts stretch vendors to their operational limits already without managing finicky inventory. Shelf-stable prepackaged snacks like nutrition bars and candy prove more manageable, sell faster and yield higher margins.
Overly Specific Goods
Niche products connected to individual performers resonate with their core fan bases but leave most attendees unaware. For example, artist-specific t-shirts only move the needle for devotees, not the general public wandering past booths. Hyper-targeted offerings limit prospective purchase pools unless show lineups skew toward specific genres. Even then, diversified novelty goods sell better than any singular artist’s touring merch.
Conclusion
Festival vending remains extremely lucrative for vendors, attracting impulse buyers already primed for shopping excursions. Portable gadgets, flashy accessories, weather items and trendy looks offer nearly guaranteed flips. Just stay away from bulky, expensive, or short-lived inventory while also avoiding niche performers with limited fan bases. Cater offerings toward diverse crowds in party mode seeking spontaneous additions amplifying their weekends. Keep these festival season prep tips in mind while merchandizing booths and watch sales explode.
