[Ansteorra] Question 4/24

[Cairenn Day]

Somebody asked about merchants, I am sure that it will effect the
merchants first.  When it costs more to get to an event, that means less
spending money at the event.  People will buy only the items that they
have to have, less impact on the armorers, but items like new garb,
books, jewelry, ect., will not be in the budget.  There are many SCA
merchants who depend on their sales, to fund their trips.  There are
many merchants that do not expect  to sell much more than their
expenses, if they don't make at least a minimum amount of sales, they
will not be able to come.  Some may say that they should be able to fund
their own SCA life, and that  has some merit, but, there are a lot of
people out of work and merchanting is one way of being able to go to
some events.  The merchants are a valuable part of SCA, we donate a lot
of prizes and largess.  My donations of items run to $250.00-300.00
(retail price) a year.  I also often will sell items at, or very close
to my cost, to those who are buying prizes.  My figure did not include
how much I spend on my own largess.  I hope I do not sound like a
'whiner', but I would like to make the point that, if you have a little
to spend at an event, it would be nice to support the true SCA
merchants.  This is not as much of a problem, at smaller events, but
Pensic, Gulf Wars and larger events like Warlord and AAA, will have a
number of primarily Ren.Fair vendors, who use the SCA to help their
incomes out.  I do not grudge them their sales, most of them are also
struggling artists, and they are not able to play and help out as much
as those of us that are SCA first and merchants second. I do not get to
as many events as I would like to, because, I do merchant at outside
craft shows, so, I consider myself to be a borderline "SCA merchant".  I
would like for you to consider how you spend your SCA 'fun' money.  I
don't know if most people realized these facts about your merchants.

an unpaid Ad and rant, for you local merchants
H.Ly. Cairenn