Private and corporate events: a different kind of booking, and what to check before you say yes

Fall is when a different kind of booking starts showing up alongside the usual run of Markets and Festivals: a company reaching out directly about a holiday office party, a corporate campus asking for a small vendor pop-up, or a property manager wanting a handful of makers for a private shopping night. These private and corporate bookings don't work quite like a public Show — there's no jury, no open application, and often no crowd of strangers walking an outdoor aisle. They can be some of the most pleasant, most reliably paid gigs on a season's calendar, but only if you know what's actually different about them before you say yes.

What makes it a different kind of booking

A public Market or Festival is open to anyone who shows up, juried or approved through a normal application, and the organizer's job is drawing a crowd. A private or corporate event flips that: the guest list is usually fixed in advance — employees, residents, invited clients — and the person booking you already has an audience, they're paying (or inviting you) to bring the booth to it. You're not competing with a hundred other applicants for a spot in a public directory listing; you're usually found through a direct message, a referral from another vendor, or an event planner who saw your work somewhere else.

That difference changes almost everything else about the booking, from how you get invited to how you get paid.

How they usually find you

Public Shows and Markets are the ones a vendor searches out and applies to. Private and corporate bookings tend to work in reverse — someone finds you. A few common paths:

• A past customer or vendor at a Market who works in event planning or HR, and remembers your booth from a public show.
• A referral from another vendor who's already done that company's event, or a fellow maker who was asked but couldn't make the date.
• Direct outreach from an office manager, property manager, or event planner, often found through your own social presence or website rather than any application platform.
• A market or Festival organizer who also books private gigs, recommending vendors they already know are reliable.

Because so much of this runs on referral, being easy to reach and quick to respond matters more here than it does for a public application with a fixed deadline. A vendor site or a social bio with a clear way to get in touch is doing real work in this channel, even if it never gets used for a public Show application.

The money usually works differently

Public Shows typically charge a booth fee, whether flat or a percentage of sales, and you keep what you sell above that cost. Private and corporate events are more varied. Some charge a booth fee just like a public Show. Some charge nothing at all — the organizer wants vendors on-site as a perk for their guests and treats your presence as free entertainment. Some pay you directly, a flat appearance fee on top of or instead of your sales, especially for a shorter corporate event where the company is footing the bill as an employee benefit rather than expecting a booth fee to cover their costs.

Ask plainly, early, which of those it is — don't assume it works like a public Show just because the format looks similar. "Is there a booth fee, or is this a paid appearance?" is a fair, direct question, and most organizers booking a private event expect it. Whatever the structure turns out to be, it still runs through the same take-home math as any other Event: sales, minus whatever you're paying out (a booth fee if there is one, travel, other expenses), plus any flat fee coming the other way. Knowing the structure up front is what lets you actually plan around it instead of guessing at the end of the night.

What to ask before you say yes

A private or corporate event skips a lot of the public-show groundwork — there's no printed vendor prospectus, no FAQ page, sometimes not even a written agreement unless you ask for one. That means the questions land on you to ask, not to find on an application page:

• How many guests, and is it public foot traffic or a closed guest list? A closed corporate holiday party with 150 employees behaves nothing like an open Market, and your sales expectations should match which one it actually is.
• What's the space, and what do you need to bring? A hotel ballroom or office lobby may supply tables and won't allow a canopy at all; an outdoor courtyard event might expect your full normal setup. Ask specifically rather than assuming your usual booth translates.
• Power, load-in access, and timing. Corporate venues often have their own building rules — a specific loading dock, a security check-in, a hard start-and-end window — that a public Show's open field or fairground doesn't.
• Is there a written agreement, even a short one? A public Show almost always comes with vendor terms you sign. A private booking often doesn't, unless you ask for something in writing — even a short email confirming the date, the space, the fee structure, and the hours is worth having before you commit inventory and a weekend to it.
• Payment timing. A public Show usually pays you as you sell, cash or card, on the spot. A corporate client paying you a flat fee may run on their own invoicing schedule — net 30, a check mailed after the event — so ask when and how you'll actually be paid, not just how much.

Category exclusivity works differently too

At a juried public Show, category exclusivity is something an organizer manages deliberately, capping how many vendors sell similar work. At a small private event, there may only be a handful of vendors total, and nobody's necessarily thought about whether two of them are both selling candles. If that matters to you, it's worth asking who else is confirmed, the same way you might ask about category caps at a public application — just know you may be the first person to raise it.

Treat it like a real booking, not a favor

Because these often start with "hey, would you be interested," it's easy to treat a private booking more casually than a Show you had to apply and pay a fee to get into. Resist that. The company or planner is trusting you with their event the same way a Show organizer trusts a vendor with their reputation, and doing it well — showing up on time, professional, with a booth that looks as put-together as it would at a public Festival — is often how the next referral happens. A private event that goes well is frequently the reason the same company books you again next year, or a colleague at another office reaches out.

Keep it on the same calendar as everything else

A private or corporate booking rarely comes with the built-in reminders a public Show's application deadline creates — there's no jury notification, no acceptance email with a countdown. That makes it easier for the actual date, the deposit, or a follow-up you promised to send, to slip through the cracks of a busy fall. Adding it to your season the same way you'd add any other Show — through the Tracker's Add a Show form, with its own date, fee (or payout), and notes — keeps a one-off private gig from living only in a text thread you'll lose track of by November.

Private and corporate bookings won't show up in a public directory the way an open Show does, since there's no public listing to find — but once you've got the date, they belong right alongside the rest of your season. Artisans Almanac offers a 30-day free trial if you want this fall's private and corporate bookings tracked in the same place as everything else on your calendar.