There’s a lot of confusion about the whole Application Process for Oddmall Vendors, so I figured I should write it out in a post that I can point at rather than typing it over and over and over again
STEP 1: STARTING INVENTORY. At every Oddmall, we offer the vendors the opportunity to purchase a space for the next Oddmall show; they have “Dibs”. They can pay in cash at the show, or pay online up to 3 days before we open applications to new vendors. We have between 40%-75% of our sales this way. This time around, we pre-sold 83 out of the 170 available spaces. That’s roughly 50% of the spaces before we even look at an application!
STEP 2: APPLICATIONS. We accept applications for new vendors for a week OR till we have over 150 applications, whichever comes first. We do our darndest to post on a daily basis during this time across Facebook, Instagram, BluSky and Threads PLUS send notifications via our newsletter to make sure everyone has ample chance to go fill out an application, and we announce when we close the applications.
STEP 3: FIRST PASS. We go through all the applications and pick out the ones we KNOW we won’t be approving for one reason or another; already too many vendors that are selling the same category of stuff, too “Adult”, too “Vanilla”, MLM, Pyramid Scheme, Drop Shippers, etc. Rejection notes go to them.
STEP 4: OBVIOUS CHOICES. During The First Pass, we will have marked all the applications that are just obviously too awesome to not be in Oddmall; Stuff we’ve literally never seen anywhere else, vendors we have poached from other shows (shameless!), stuff we REALLY want a chance to buy and bringing them to OUR Oddmall might be our only chance… Acceptance Letters go to as many of those folks as we have spaces available.
STEP 5: THE GRIND. Every day that we DON’T sell out of spaces entirely, we send another two or three “Obvious Choice” vendors acceptance letters. We also start grouping the Obvious Choice vendors into categories of what they sell so we don’t end up over-saturating with one type of vendor, and we start approving folks based mostly on what kind of vendor I want in a space rather than just any vendor regardless of what they do.
STEP 6: ENDGAME. Once we have just 5 or 6 spaces left, we look at the amount of Approved Applications we still have out there that haven’t paid and make a few posts about how we’re really down to the nitty-gritty here and those outstanding vendors might not get in! We usually time this around one or two vendors who have been approved and they contacted us to say something like “Aww jeez can I pay on Friday?” so we make a post saying “Okay, if we still have spaces come Saturday Morning, we’re approving more vendors!”
STEP 7: REMNANTS. Once we have filled all the spaces, we send rejection letters to everyone that’s left to let them know they’re definitely good enough for Oddmall, we just ran out of room!
 
ODDMALL Emporium Of The Weird - PNW Editions 