Vendor Guide | Meet Me at the Fair

1. Get started — two paths

Before you sign up, search the site for your business name at /vendors. One of two things is true:

Path A — Your business is already listed

If you see a page that looks like yours (e.g., the listing was created by us during event coverage or imported from a fair's vendor roster), don't create a duplicate. Use the "Claim this listing" button on your vendor page. It opens a signup form with your business name pre-filled. Sign up with the email you want your account on, then verify it (see Section 2 below).

What happens next depends on which email is already on file for the listing. There are three cases.

Case 1 — Fast path: your email is already the listing's contact email

If the email you signed up with matches the contact email already on the listing, claim is one click — no second email needed. Once you've verified your address (Section 2), go to your vendor page or your dashboard's "Claim my listing" widget and the button reads "Claim this listing now". Click it. The "Claimed" badge appears on your public page on the next load.

This is the fast path because the email-verification step you just did also proves you control the email that's listed as the business contact — both proofs collapse into one.

Case 2 — Standard path: a different email is on file as the business contact

If the listing has a contact email on file that's different from your signup email (a personal account email vs. an info@yourbusiness.com, for example), proving ownership requires access to the business's listed mailbox:

From your dashboard or vendor profile, click "Send me a confirmation email" in the "Claim my listing" widget.
The confirmation email is sent to the business's contact email on file — not your signup email. The page tells you which mailbox (masked): "We sent a confirmation to in***@yourbusiness.com".
Open that mailbox. Click the link in the email.
Your listing now shows a "Claimed" badge.

If you don't have access to that mailbox, the claim won't complete on this path — see Case 3.

Case 3 — No contact email on file: ask support

If the listing has no contact email on file (common for older listings imported from public fair rosters), neither of the above paths can verify business ownership. The "Send me a confirmation email" button returns a message like:

This listing has no contact email on file, so we can't send a verification to verify business ownership. Please contact support — an admin can approve the claim manually.

Email us via the contact link in the footer. Include the listing URL and any way we can confirm you represent the business (a business domain email, registration documents, prior MMATF correspondence). An admin will approve and grant you the listing manually.

Path B — Your business isn't listed yet

Go to /register and pick "Vendor" as the role. Provide:

Business name
Your email
A password

After you submit, you'll get a verification email — click the link to prove the address is yours. Your listing is created at /vendors/{your-business-slug} immediately, but a few things wait on verification (see below).

2. Verify your email — and why it matters

Until you click the verification link in the welcome email, your account is in a "pending" state. The site shows an amber banner across the top reminding you. You can browse and view your profile, but you can't:

Edit your vendor listing
Apply to events
Submit a new event for review
(If you have an Enhanced Profile) receive messages from the public contact form

The verification link is good for 24 hours. If it expires before you click it, hit "Resend verification" from your dashboard banner and a fresh one will arrive.

If you signed up with Google or Facebook (instead of email + password), you're already verified — those providers vouch for your address at sign-in time.

3. Edit your listing

Once verified:

Sign in at /login.
Open Your profile from the top-right menu, or go directly to /vendor/profile.
Fill in or update:
- Business name — also drives your public URL slug. Renaming here automatically 301-redirects the old URL to the new one so any inbound links keep working.
- Description — what you sell or do, in your own words.
- Products / categories — used for matching with events that are looking for vendors of your type.
- Logo URL — a publicly-accessible image link. Enhanced Profile vendors get a larger logo treatment on the public page.
- Contact details — name, email, phone. The email you list here is what we'd forward inbound contact-form messages to (Enhanced Profile only). It's never displayed in the page HTML — it stays server-side.
- Address, city, state, ZIP — for geographic search and location-based recommendations.
- Year established, payment methods, license/insurance info — all optional, but they bump your completeness score, which influences how prominently you surface in vendor lists.
Click Save.

A "Profile completeness" indicator on the page shows you what's missing. Higher completeness = better visibility on the site.

4. Apply to an event

Browse events at /events.
Open an event you're interested in.
Click Apply on the event page. Optionally add a note about your booth needs.
Your application appears on the Applications page with a status (APPLIED, WAITLISTED, APPROVED, CONFIRMED, etc.).
If two events you're applied to overlap on date, the page flags the conflict so you can withdraw from one.

Some events let approved vendors self-confirm — for those you'll go straight from APPLIED to CONFIRMED once the promoter approves.

5. Suggest an event we don't have

If you spot a fair that should be on the site but isn't:

Go to /vendor/suggest-event.
Paste the event's URL or fill in name + date + location.
Submit. We review submissions before publishing.

Once approved, you're auto-applied to the event if you want.

6. Enhanced Profile (paid tier)

A vendor with an active Enhanced Profile gets:

Larger 200×200 logo at the top of the public page
Photo gallery (up to 2 images) with a lightbox
A green "Verified" badge next to the business name
A contact form on the public page — visitors send you messages without your email ever appearing in the page source
Placement in the rotating Featured Vendors section at the top of the main vendors page and category pages
Optional branded URL (custom slug) — old URL still 301-redirects

Enhanced Profile is $29/year, admin-managed. There's no self-service signup today — contact us if you want to enable it for your business.

7. Troubleshooting

The verification email never arrived. Check spam first. If it's not there, click "Resend verification" from your dashboard banner. If the second one also doesn't arrive within 5 minutes, write to us at support — there may be a deliverability issue with your mailbox provider.

I clicked the verification link and got "link expired." Verification links are valid for 24 hours. Click "Resend verification" to get a fresh one.

I tried to edit my profile and got "email_unverified." Your account hasn't verified yet — click the link in the verification email, then retry.

My business name in the form doesn't match my listing URL slug. The URL slug is derived from the business name (lowercased, spaces-to-hyphens, special chars stripped). If you rename the business in your profile, the URL changes too, and the old URL 301-redirects to the new one — old links keep working.

Someone else "claimed" my business listing. Reach out to us. The claim flow normally requires the claimer to have access to either the email already on file as the business contact (Case 2 above) or — if no contact email is on file — an admin's manual approval (Case 3). That makes the most common forms of false-claim hard, but we can investigate disputed claims case-by-case if something slipped through.

I clicked "Claim this listing" and the page says it has no contact email on file. That's Case 3 above. The listing was imported from a public fair roster without an associated business mailbox, so neither of the automated flows can verify ownership. Email support — an admin can approve manually after out-of-band verification.

My listing shows "Not Claimed." That means no one has signed up and confirmed ownership of it yet. Use the "Claim this listing" button on your vendor page to start that flow (Path A above).