FESTIVAL REGATTA 2007 >> VENDOR INFO

Vendor Updates

If you've already decided to bring a tent to the Festival, here's a map with the relative location of the vendors area adjacent to the boathouse.  Bring your vehicle right up to the vendor area along the breakdown lane of the boulevard which will be marked off with cones for your convenience.  Bernadette and Carl will may be at the boathouse on Friday from 4-6pm, and then for certain on Saturday morning early.  Bernadette should have sent you an email with your "space number" that goes with this map.  If you have any last-minute questions or need help with something, please write us at vendors@merrimackrowing.org.  DO NOT SET UP A TENT UNTIL WE HAVE CONFIRMED YOUR SPECIFIC LOCATION -- we don't want to move a pitched tent because of traffic issues.

General Information

The Festival Regatta itself brings approximately 300 boats and a thousand rowers to the Merrimac River for a great day of racing and fun.  Accompanying those boats are the competitors that row them, and a few thousand friends and family, all within a 100 yard radius of where we locate the vendor area next to the boathouse.

If you can't make it to the regatta, then we have made it very economic for you to advertise on our two rowing web sites.  Our web sites generate highly qualified traffic from the rowing community, and we especially see a distinct peak in traffic on the days before and after the Festival Regatta and the TRR -- keep this in mind as you consider whether spending some of your advertising money with us is worth your while.

Please review the information below, and if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to contact us for a fast and thorough response.  Our email address for vendor relations is located at the bottom of this page.

Pricing

Details on Tents

• We mark off the area directly downriver of the boat house on the night before the regatta, you can set up your tent usually as early as the Saturday afternoon prior to the regatta.  The tents are all in the final 1000m of the race course and offer a great location near the rowers, guests and normal pedestrian traffic that is popular along this stretch of the boulevard.
• There is ample curb-side parking for drop-off and pick-up of your materials.  We're not sure how long you can keep your vehicle there, but last year there was no issue leaving your vehicle near your tent.
• Locations will be assigned starting closest to the boathouse, in order of receipt of payment.  If you wish to pay on the day of the regatta, please send us an email so that we will reserve a spot for you.
• Note that we do NOT provide the tent, only the space.  If you need a space larger than 10'x20', please let us know in your e-mail reservation.
• We expect to have a security guard patrolling the boathouse area overnight, but we cannot be responsible for any materials that you leave unattended at any time.
• Payments must be made by check payable to MRRA, and payment is due no later than the morning of the regatta.

Details on Web Advertising

• Our two websites, www.textileriverregatta.org and www.merrimackriverrowing.org each generate a substantial amount of qualified traffic from the rowing community.  The TRR web site typically has most of its activity in the days surrounding the TRR, while the MRRA web site is spread more evenly during all of the warm weather months.  The following statistics might help you decide if a web site ad on our sites is worthwhile for you:
  • www.textileriverregatta.org -- Total hits during the two months of Sep and Oct, 2004 were 120,565 coming from a total of 5,731 unique visitors.  We do expect of course that many visitors from September are the same as those counted in October as competitors return to the site in early October to check their results.
  • The www.merrimackrowing.org web site generated total hits of 3.9 million from 15,000 unique visits during the period Oct 2004 through Sep 2005.  This site serves the rowing community in the Merrimac River region on a much wider scale, with the most activity coming during the warm weather months from April through October.  This site does generate some peak traffic in July when the MRRA runs its annual Festival Regatta which normally hosts over 400 boats in a wide range of events.
• Your web ad will be prominently displayed in the left menu column as shown on this page and all other pages on the web site.  A small ad is considered no larger than 125 pixels square (the size of one of the square ads shown at left) and a large ad may be 500x125 or 125x500.  For horizontal ads, we reserve the right to locate them in a way that doesn't dramatically alter the look or flow of content of the site, but we will make every attempt to locate such ads above the fold.
• If you have a particular image that should be used, send a link to that image in an email.  If you don't have a preference, we'll take the likeliest image from your web site and create the ad and link for you.  In either case, be sure to specify the URL where you want the click to go -- some people prefer to have a special landing page on their site when a click-thru comes their way.
• If there is significant response to these advertising offers, we will evenly distribute the ads across all of the web pages on both web sites.  So we are not guaranteeing that your ad will appear on every web page, but we are guaranteeing that you will be represented fairly and that we do expect every significant page on our sites to contain ads in the left margin.  We will also alter the order of the ads on each page so that your ad isn't always at the top or the bottom.
• Your ads will run for a full calendar year from early September or June through early September or June of the following year, depending on which regatta campaign was underway when you purchased your ad.

Event Program Ads

• We do not print a program for the Festival Regatta.  However, the ad you purchase for the Festival Regatta will appear in the TRR program.   In 2005, we printed and distributed 1,000 event programs at the TRR free of charge to participants and guests.

How To Order

• We try to make it as simple as possible for you in all respects.
• If you would like to set up a tent at the regatta, send your check or money order to the address below.  If you wish to pay on the day of the regatta, send us an email to reserve your space.
• For web site and Event Program ads, send your check or money order to the address below, or send an email and we'll get started.  If you have specific artwork you would like us to use, mention that in the email.  PLEASE MOVE QUICKLY:  We acknowledge that we are late with this correspondence, and we have certain lead time requirements to get your ads onto the web sites and into the programs.  Please help us with this by letting us know as soon as you can about your intentions.  We promise to give you better notice next year.
• If you wish to pay on regatta day, please send an email and clearly mention in the email if you wish to (a) rent tent space, (b) place a web ad and/or (c) place an ad in the Event Program.  We cannot guarantee that a request for a web ad can be placed in time for the regatta unless we know prior to July 1st.

Payments and Correspondence

Make your check or money order payable to:

MRRA

Send your check or money order to:

MRRA - Festival Regatta VENDORS
P.O. Box 1909
Lowell, MA 01852-1493

To send us an email and reserve your tent space or to sign up for a web ad or Event Program ad, or if you have any vendor-related questions, please send all email correspondence to:

vendors@merrimackrowing.org