Most of the stuff the vendors has seemed to be overpriced junk. We merchandised ourslves and had a lot of appropriately-priced junk as well as fairly priced nicer items.
What you get by going this route is control of your product lines. We made over $3K on about $10K in sales. The last time we used a service, we made half that with $2K more in sales.
I'd rather have the PTO make the profit than the third party.
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down. <img src=images/smilies/smile.gif>
Ours is a Santa's Workshop - it's actually a craft show. We charge crafters so much per table. It's not a money maker but the kids absolutely love it. Nothing is marked over $10 and all items need to have some part be hand made. We had issues with vendors buying a bunch of cheap Dollar Store things and marking up the cost.
the year before last we bought everything at deals... a everything is a $1 store and sold it for a dollar. last year I decided to use a company and went with Fun services, we earned $700 profit from a 500 student school in only 3 days, that does not include all the sales jsut our cut of them. plus likd dolce said we recived some pretty awsome sign-on bonuses....
We use Fun Services and have always had great experiences with them. We are able to make up to 40% profit, and they give us lots of sign-on bonuses that we cannot find with other companies.
Personally, I feel the holiday shop should be a service and not a profit maker, but that's my $0.02. I can't remember the name of the vendor our group used this year, but they turned a nice profit from one and a half days of sales from around 500 students--$1600. (Just remember though--despite the tidy profit from the some 30% mark-up-- it's not a fundraiser).
