Selling merchandise alongside a seated event – Vanco Events

Selling merchandise alongside your event tickets provides convenience for your customers, increases merchandise sales, and can cut down on cash handling on the event day.

Whilst there are a variety of methods for selling merchandise alongside general admission or Space allocation events, events with a Seat allocation have more constraints to help protect the seat allocation. As we are working with tickets, we want to ensure that only tickets relating to the performance are allocated a seat number.

This article covers:

Setting merchandise items as individual tickets
Setting merchandise items as combination tickets

Setting merchandise items as individual tickets

This setup offers the greatest flexibility for multiple purchases and multiple items, as well as allowing for your merchandise items to be open for sale prior to and after your performance ticket sales.

This setup involves 4 main areas:

Creating a new session time
Creating a new Section
Creating a new Pricing group
Linking up via the Pricing Schema

To set up, using DVD orders as an example:

Step 1: Create a new Session Time:

From the left menu, click Dashboard
Under Manage events overview, click your event name
From the left menu, click Session Times under Basic Information
Click Add Sessions
With Add Single Session Time selected, enter the details for the new session time for your merchandise orders:
- The Session start date and time should be after the last performance session
- The Session end date and time can stay as the default (it wont be seen)
- The Booking start date and time should be when you wish to start taking merchandise orders
- The Booking end date and time should be when you wish to stop taking merchandise orders
Click Save
Click Edit next to the session time you just created
Select the Additional Settings tab
In the Session Time Label field, enter DVD Orders Only
Click Save

How the session will display for the customer when booking:

Consider setting the booking end date and time for a date after the performance takes place, as you may find an increase in your merchandise sales. It is common for attendees to decide on purchase after they have attended the event.

Step 2: Create a new Section:

From the left menu, click Sections under Allocation
Click Add new section
Click Next
Name the section to be appropriate for what you are selling eg. DVD Orders
Click Next (do not select Copy settings from)
Select Space from the Allocation type drop-down field
In the Maximum number of attendees field, enter in the quantity of the merchandise items you have in inventory to sell. If this number is based on how many orders you take, set a large number that you don't believe you would exceed.
Click Create section, then click Finish

Step 3: Create a new pricing group:

From the left menu, click Pricing groups (ticket prices), under Ticketing
Click Add pricing group
Name the pricing group appropriate for what you're selling eg. DVD Orders, and click OK
Click Add Ticket Type, and fill out the details of the item you are selling
Repeat step 4 for all merchandise items you wish to sell

Step 4: Linking up via the Pricing Schema:

From the left menu, go to Pricing schema (under Ticketing)
A table will load, outlining your sessions, sections and the pricing groups assigned to each.
Using the drop-down field under the Pricing groups column, assign the new merchandise Pricing group to the new merchandise Section for each Session time
For the session times that relate to the performance, for the new merchandise section only, under the Status column change the Status from Active to Hidden
For the new session time that relates to the merchandise, in the performance section only, under the Status column change the Status from Active to Hidden
Click Save

Once you have completed the setup be sure to go through Preview Event or Make a Booking to confirm it is linked up and displaying correctly. Our Support team would also be happy to double check your setup for you. They can be contacted via support@vancoevents.com

Setting merchandise items as combination tickets

This setup is simple and works well when you have one merchandise option and a limited number of performance ticket types.

It does restrict the merchandise sales period to be the same as the performance tickets. The customer will not have the flexibility of purchasing the merchandise individually, meaning they need to make the decision to purchase the merchandise item at the same time as the performance ticket type.