Nomadic Home
Taking your home with you must be exponentially more comfortable than finding accommodation as you go and more economical for a given comfort zone too. This blog will discuss various options for traveling homes, on both land and water, as well as general lifestyle and income options.
Some great information on the Gypsy Fair travelling NZ, including an itinerary…yes, you heard right. A genuine, honest to goodness, Gypsy fair itinerary. And contact information…
The site posts the Gypsy Fair Mission Statement
- To provide a living for people who want to travel and support themselves in house trucks or house buses.
- To bring fun and entertainment to towns around New Zealand.
- To encourage the supportive and social side of living within a mobile village, so that our lifestyle is both fun and profitable.
- The Gypsy Fair should provide the public with an exiting and entertaining environment, so enjoyable that they will be waiting for us to return again next year.
It outlines some of the requirements you’ll need to meet to make a go of it including attending ALL of the fairs. Not sure what the penalty is if you don’t make one or two.
Anyway, good to see that someone has taken the time to find out what the GF is all about, and to display what it takes to join the fair…
I was in contact with them before they hit Invers, and we discussed this issue, so now the hippypad is linking through to the evenfinder listings on a permanent basis, this wil be more obvious once I get it revamped over the next month.
You can’t really argue with the fact that if the GF are happy as it stands, why change anything. Fair comment.
And you’re right, I commented to my partner the last time we went, that GF appears to have doubled in size since the previous time we saw them (2 years prior), so something must be working…
I’ll just have to keep my ears closer to the ground, and thanks to the original source of this post, Nomadic Home, the itinerary can be regularly checked on the events site.
I see two sides to this publicity issue. One side is the “Market and publicize more = more foot traffic, therefore more customers = more profit” and the other side, which is taken by Gypsy Fair “Watch out for pirates, don’t advertise to far in advance, to give them a chance to hobble us”.
The reality is there is no one right answer as to which is the best option. The fact of the matter is it is their business, period!
I’m not deriving either my income or lifestyle from Gypsy Fair, so whatever my opinions are about how they would be best served in their marketing is, they are my opinions only and there is no reason that they should be compelled either legally, morally, or ethically to listen, consider or argue the benefits or otherwise of my opinions, or anyone else’s opinions on the matter.
If I were to join them, it may be a slightly different story, but even then it has to be remembered that it is a business owned by an individual, which others have signed onto in a contractual arrangement. If the people who are actually living and working in the Gypsy Fair were unhappy with the system that they operate under, they are not compelled to stay with Gypsy Fair. The impression I had when visiting was that they were happy with the current situation.
It also has to be remembered that while Gypsy Fair is a business, it is also a lifestyle for those involved with it. At the end of the day, those that I spoke to seemed satisfied with the whole package. They were getting enough people through to earn a living and had their choice of lifestyle to go along with it. They have no obligation to inform everyone who maybe interested in visiting. In fact there is a case to be made that could suggest the extra foot traffic may not bring in more profit, but would increase the workload and stress. They certainly made no money out of me and I am one of the people who like to know when they are coming so that I can have a look around, though they have received some more publicity from my visit at no financial cost to themselves.
I have a background in both the retail and entertainment industries, so can relate in a practical way to both sides of the Gypsy Fair operation. From a retail perspective, I have been involved in trade shows which increased foot traffic substantially but did not convert to increased turnover for the business that I was working for, which demonstrates that just increasing a marketing budget doesn’t necessarily increase turn over. They do have to be able to convert people into customers for there to be any benefit in attracting them and they do have a target market, which they seem to attract with their current strategy, in large enough numbers for them to be happy with. From the entertainment side of things, they are putting on a show. They are not just shop keepers and the hours that they put in equate to long show hours, which they maintain for eight months of the year. The impression that I gained from them is that they require the four month break to recharge for the work they put into the show as it stands currently. This is probably in part, why they are one of the more successful traveling enterprises.
It is a balancing act and at the end of the day they could do a slicker promotion and improve numbers and turnover, but they don’t do that badly now and it is their choice and their’s alone on how they run the operation.
There is also nothing stopping any other individuals or groups from setting up and demonstrating how to do it better if they want to. I’m NOT planning on doing that at present.
Cheers Stuart. I can appreciate the fact that they do attend the same location at roughly the same time each year, but apart from posters outside the location, and on their vehicles, I seem to have missed anything in the way of community advertising about their presence in town.
Still, it remains that there have been groups in the past that have used the GF itinerary when it was published for their own advantage with no outlay for council or other fees. I do think that is a bit on the nose. And in that respect, I abide by the fact that the GF are reluctant to release their itinerary too far in advance.
But maybe a little more advetising will generate more foot traffic? A couple of radio ads in the days leading up to the event? In our town, there are like a dozen local rags that a couple could be advertised in the week before arrival?
Ok, ok, it costs money, but that’s what advertising is about. If you don’t advertise, no one knows you’re there, so no one goes to the fair. The revenue gathered from the people that have seen the ads and visited the fair, will pay for future advertising, so more people come along, etc, etc…
I relate this to a local show put on by our little theater. They didn’t advertise because they didn’t have any money to advertise, so no-one has showed up for the first couple of shows. 20-30 people maybe. So they aren’t making any money, so they can’t pay for advertising for future shows. Its a vicious circle. Thankfully, the local rag ran a community article on the show, and you can guarantee that the number of paying punters will increase because of that exposure.
In reply to Dusty’s comment. The competition problems that the Gypsy Fair have are somewhat different to what a majority of businesses face. Their primary problem in advertising a full itinerary lies in the fact that having expended a fair amount of resources in both time and money, in planning and booking venues. Other groups of house truckers have in the past used the Gypsy Fairs itinerary and arrived a few days or a week ahead of time, proclaiming to be the Gypsy Fair, done their trading and moved on. So when the Gypsy Fair arrive, the work they have done to prepare for an event has been in effect stolen, leaving only the crumbs behind for them. It is not merely a matter of lifting their game. The effect is much the same as piracy is to the music and movie industries.
To be fair to the Gypsy Fair, they do follow almost the same route every year and in some cases have their events at the same places at exactly the same time each year, so it should not be that difficult to work out the time of year they are in your area and start checking their itinerary. This year they arrived in my town at a slightly earlier time than normal, but because I knew they are normally here about now, I was able to track them down in a nearby town, before they left the area.
Well according to that post, they advertise heavily online, in newspapers, posters etc. I’ve missed the fair 2 out of the last five times theyve been up this way cos I had no idea they were in town. So, 4 events is the maximum they will advertise apparently. Unless you’re in Invercargill…
It’s nice to see some more info about Fair events, I look forward to getting to each Fair that I can, but I still see only 2 events notices in advance. This doesn’t help with life plans, work, family, etc. Each time I miss an event , thru short notice or poor advertising , it’s really the stall holders that miss out, like you stu, my money then stays with me.
I don’t understand the fear of competition, in my limited experience (15 yrs working for myself) if someone else does it better , then you just have to lift your game, whatever the effort required.
Or go home.
See you at the Ashburton Fair