Originally Posted by
megan
mcoates, not involved, but what I was told when inquired of the EAA at one of the shows. On the basis of your info the EAA rep didn't know what he was talking about. I know not.
I have just finished my 20th year as an exhibitor and whilst I don't like to complain about the EAA and AirVenture it is set up totally as an moneymaking opportunity. I would use an example of A&W that sell burgers and other things at the event. All of their cash registers and eftpos machines are connected directly to the EAA. The transaction that they produce comes out on AirVenture invoice and then directly from this comes a 40% commission on their sales as well as them having to pay for a site. The EAA actually have people that wander around and spend some time at each site discreetly making sure that every customer gets a receipt and that every transaction goes through the payment system. If someone starts skimming for example ice creams on a hot day and that is a lot of income lost by the EAA so they have people wandering around discreetly looking at the operations of the different food stalls. The cost of "winning" this food outlet location is not inexpensive either with site fees of over $20,000 just for a small 10 m x 10 m site. The EAA also have food inspectors which wander around randomly for the publics protection and they check that each food vendor is preparing food with gloves and they even use a temperature probe to check some of the items have been kept correctly stored in either cold storage or when they are cooked. They do this for the protection of the public and to avoid getting sued if somebody gets sick they can at least say well we check this site 4 times on that day and everything was in order. Another thing that just came to mind about restrictions for vendor's is that A&W is only allowed to sell softserve ice cream, they cannot sell packaged ice cream but then you will go a little bit further down the road and there will be a stand selling packaged ice cream. The packaged ice cream stands are completely run by the EAA. A company, let's say Peter's ice cream will again seek exclusive arrangements for packaged ice cream and sell a drumstick for $0.40 wholesale to the EAA and they in turn turn around and sell it for $3.50 retail to the public. This is again a commercial arrangement which Peter's ice cream have entered into with the EAA to boost their product and profitability.
As somebody said earlier you cannot buy a Coca-Cola product at AirVenture. Again this is a commercial consideration like a sponsorship package where the manufacturers of Pepsi-based products may pay $100,000 upfront to have their products sold exclusively. On a good year with hot temperatures I am sure they would make a killing, on a cold year the returns may be so so.
It is not unusual for any event like this to have preferred and exclusive supplier agreements. It is part of business. If someone goes to air venture and says that I sell a product and I would like to be able to sell/exhibit that product exclusively and here is my money transfer for XXX dollars then the deal gets done. It is nothing different to OzKosh or whatever our local event is being called at the moment.