Customer Story
How Deschutes County Fair Traded Spreadsheet Chaos for Room to Grow Using Eventeny
Highlights:
One system for hundreds of artists, vendors, and exhibitorsApplications can be managed on-the-goFairground staff get more time to focus on self-produced events
Oregon's largest county fair
What started as a potato festival grew into the largest county fair in Oregon. But the systems running it hadn't kept up. Vendor management lived across spreadsheets, sticky notes, and a platform that couldn't deliver on its promises.
Since switching to Eventeny, the team manages hundreds of vendors from a phone. They've cut the busywork, and freed up time to start producing new events instead of just one fair a year.
"I can be sitting at a little league game and approve a vendor. I couldn't do that with other programs."
Brandi Ebner, Event Coordinator, Deschutes County Fair
Before Eventeny:
A system that couldn't keep up
Decades ago, Deschutes County Fair was a regional potato festival. It grew year after year until it became the largest county fair in Oregon. Meanwhile, the vendor management software running the show never caught up. Fairgound staff ran hundreds of vendors on a program that couldn't keep pace, filling the gaps with spreadsheets for tracking and scattered note docs for everything else.
"I could not go with the system that we had previously, who had promised me the world and couldn't deliver on any of it."
Brandi Ebner, Event Coordinator, Deschutes County Fair
She was ready to give up on software altogether. Then an email from Eventeny landed in her inbox. She was about to delete it. "Here's another program," she remembers thinking. "I guess I'll check it out because it can't be worse than the one I have."
Fairgrounds across the country are leaning less on rental income and more on self-produced events to stay financially healthy, since one weekend rental might bring in $10,000 while a self-produced event can bring in $80,000. But running more events takes staff time, and Brandi's team had none to spare.
The solution:
Taking time back with Eventeny
Eventeny replaced the spreadsheets on day one. Vendor management for 300+ vendors now happens from a single platform, accessible from anywhere.
The shift changed how and where Brandi could work. She used to be tied to a desktop, downloading and sorting spreadsheets. Now she manages vendor approvals from her phone, wherever she happens to be, little league games included.
"I don't have random spreadsheets going and different note documents going, so it's really made things more efficient for our team."
Brandi Ebner, Event Coordiantor, Deschutes County Fair
The impact:
Time saved is money made
For a fairgrounds industry watching rental income shrink, time saved is revenue earned. Every hour Brandi gets back from admin work is an hour she can put toward producing new events instead of just maintaining one.
"Anything that makes me more efficient gives me more time to do other things, which makes us more financially productive as an organization."
Brandi Ebner, Event Coordinator, Deschutes County Fair
That efficiency turned Brandi into an advocate. She now tells other fair organizers to make the switch, half-joking that "I'm Greg's best unpaid salesperson because I tell everyone to convert."
Why Fanatics Events is building with Eventeny
For the Fanatics team, Eventeny is a real-time operational backbone for managing some of the most in-demand talent in the world, in one of the most complex event environments in the industry.
What keeps the partnership working is that Eventeny takes feedback from our organizers seriously. Our bulk upload feature, for instance, was built in direct response to how the Fanatics team needed to work.
"You keep moving forward with it. You take the feedback from your clients and you listen and you work it into the program to make it better."