Cultivating Business at the O.C. Fair : Exhibitors, Vendors Hope to Gain Sales

If you have a healthy sense of humor, step right up to Marc J. Ratner’s booth at the Orange County Fair.

Ratner is drawing caricatures that don’t always play up his customers’ best features. That is, of course, the job of a caricaturist.

“People have to be daring to see me tweak their nose just a little bit,” said Ratner, whose Fountain Valley-based business has been exhibiting at the fair on and off since 1976.

From pomegranate wine to cat collars imprinted with peace signs, visitors can get anything they want (almost) at the Orange County Fair. Retailers from the area find the annual fair a boon to business and see it as a way to get to know their customers. Such merchants are at the fair this week selling custom-designed hats, gazebos and quilted handbags.

But not everyone who would like to be there made it.

The fair, which opened Friday and runs through July 26, received 200 applications from food sellers, and 380 from commercial exhibitors. Of those, 75 food stands and 290 commercial exhibitors were accepted.

First preference is given to returning exhibitors, said Keli Villegas, a fair spokeswoman. Unusual vendors also stand a good chance of getting in, but sellers of common items, such as jewelry and clothing, sometimes have to apply for seven or eight years before they are accepted.

Even then, those merchants are lucky. Some exhibitors at the fair have held on tightly to their spots for as many as 40 years.

This year, the fair was able to accept 35 new exhibitors--among them vendors of cellular telephones, home security systems, pianos and custom-made perfumes.

If it comes down to several similar companies wanting to show their wares, Villegas said, the Orange County or California business might have an edge.

Rick and Linda Kasper of Costa Mesa sell quilted handbags and other cloth travel items, such as an ever-useful curling-iron sheath. The Kaspers are veterans of the fairgrounds, because they exhibit their Eye Catcher items on the same site every weekend at the O.C. Marketplace swap meet.

The crowd is a little different at the fair, though. “At the swap meet, we get a lot of European travelers,” Linda Kasper said, adding that the fair attracts a more local crowd.

“We have customers who live in Costa Mesa, but they won’t come to the swap meet,” she said. “They just come once a year for the fair.”

The Kaspers, whose business generates enough income to support them and two children, do about 10% of their annual sales at the fair, which they have attended for about a decade. At the fair, they hand out mail-order brochures, which bring in business for several months, Linda Kasper said.

Other exhibitors said sales are weak this year. They blame the extended duration of the fair. Instead of its usual 12-day run, the event will last 17 days this year, and people figure they have an extra week to see the sights and buy their merchandise, the exhibitors said.

But Layton Rawlins, owner of Discount Piano in Laguna Niguel, said his sales have been brisk. This is his second year at the fair, and he has added some low-cost electric keyboards, which attract young musicians.

“We’re selling them at practically cost, but we figure these kids will be new customers (for pianos) two years down the road,” he said. “We look at the fair as a chance to get acquainted.”