Article and Photos By Holly Kozelsky, 2009 Holiday Premier Chair 

Charity League held its first Holiday Premiere the weekend of Nov.
6-8. It was like an "indoor festival" -- with crafters, vendors, artisans, bake sales and activities. Twenty vendors set up displays.
The variety of items included jewelry, floral arrangements, holiday items, live plants, stained glass and crocheted and knitted hats, blankets and other items. Commercial vendors included Janice Cain, who set up a professional display of items from her stationery store and Hooper's Sauces, as well as Mary Kay, Tupperware, 31 Gifts and Belk.
Charity League and the Ridgeway 4-H Alpaca Club set up bake sales.

The event was held Friday from 3-8 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. On Friday and Saturday, Charity League members helped out vendors by taking orders and picking up their meals at local restaurants. On Saturday, Tasty Kreme donated three trays of donuts to Holiday Premiere.

Wade Nester and Billy Turner were fabulous as Santa Claus. Children visited Santa and created projects at the kids' activity table.

Admission cost $3. To encourage attendance to this first-time event, Charity League distributed about 600 free tickets throughout the community. Attendance to the event was about 300, with almost a third coming from the free tickets. Two-thirds were paid admissions.

To give value for the cost of admission, Charity League gave each attendees five small tickets (the kind from a roll -- as differentiated from the admission tickets) to use for freebies. People could get a picture with Santa for 2 tickets (they received a Polaroid to take with them immediately, and were sent a digital copy by e-mail the next day); kids' activities for one ticket; and a baked good or drink for two tickets.

The event was heavily promoted. There were several articles in the newspaper, including two regular (long) articles in the Sunday edition before the event, a Cook of the Week article the Wednesday before; three Stroller items and a big photograph of the event site on the Friday of the event; and a few PSAs on the TV and radio stations. All of that was free. Charity League also paid around $200 for four ads in the Bulletin. (Many vendors, though, said that they had expected much more advertisement, including big paid ads in other cities.) Charity League took on internet promotion for the first time by running a Facebook page and also sending out an e-mail blast.

Many months of planning went into creating the event. To get vendors, the Holiday Premiere chairman attended four area festivals to speak with each vendor individually. A database of 180 vendors was created through those efforts. Creation of promotion items was an on-going project. A Holiday Premiere information booth at Bargain Fair had three full-sized, lit Christmas trees and displayed several key items that would be for sale at Holiday Premiere. Hundreds of flyers about Holiday Premiere were given out at Bargain Fair; Holiday Premiere members talked with each of those recipients personally about the event.

The use of the buildings was donated by Fred Martin. Unfortunately, a mere week and a half before the event, the location had to change because of problems with the original location. The new (and actual) location became two separate buildings on Main Street in uptown Martinsville. That created additional staffing needs and urgent promotion. However, anticipation of such a change did result in Charity League turning away several vendors who expressed late interest.