Vendor categories in VendorHearth Pro help organize vendors according to the products or services they offer.
Categories can also be used to control how many vendors of a particular type are accepted into an event.
What Is a Vendor Category? #
A vendor category is a classification used to describe a vendor’s primary products, services, or business type.
Examples might include:
- Apparel
- Baked Goods
- Candles
- Crochet
- Jewelry
- Permanent Jewelry
- Resin
- Woodworking
- Food Trucks
Your organization can create categories that match the types of vendors you normally work with.
Creating Categories During Setup #
The VendorHearth Setup Wizard includes an option for creating your initial vendor categories.
Categories can be entered one per line during setup.
You are not limited to the categories created during the Setup Wizard. Your category list can be updated later as your organization grows or begins accepting additional vendor types.
Managing Your Categories #
VendorHearth allows organizers to maintain the categories used by their organization.
When creating categories:
- Use clear category names.
- Avoid creating duplicate categories with slightly different wording.
- Keep categories broad enough to be useful across multiple events.
- Add new categories when an existing category does not accurately represent the vendor type.
For example, creating both Jewelry and Jewelry Vendors would usually be unnecessary if they represent the same type of vendor.
Categories Can Be Used Across Events #
Your organization may maintain a larger category list while making only certain categories available for a particular event.
This allows you to reuse categories without rebuilding the entire list for every event.
For example, your organization might have a Food Truck category even though a particular indoor event does not accept food trucks.
That category can remain part of your VendorHearth category structure without being made available for that event.
Categories and Applications #
Vendor categories help identify what type of vendor is applying.
This gives organizers another way to review and manage applications beyond simply looking at the booth type requested.
Categories can also be used with event-specific limits.
For example, you may decide that an event can accommodate:
Jewelry — 3 vendors
Candles — 3 vendors
Baked Goods — 4 vendors
VendorHearth can track those category limits separately from the event’s physical booth capacity.
Category Limits Are Event-Specific #
A category does not need to have the same limit at every event.
One event may allow three jewelry vendors while another event may allow five.
This gives organizers control over category availability for each individual event.
We’ll cover this in more detail in Setting Category Availability and Limits.
Categories Are Different From Booth Types #
Categories describe what the vendor offers.
Booth types describe what space the vendor is using.
For example:
Vendor Category: Candles
Booth Type: 10′ × 10′ Indoor Booth
These pieces of information serve different purposes and should be configured separately.
Avoid Overly Specific Categories #
Creating too many highly specific categories can make your category list difficult to manage.
For example, you may not need separate categories for:
- Silver Jewelry
- Gold Jewelry
- Beaded Jewelry
- Handmade Jewelry
A single Jewelry category may be more useful if those vendors are all competing for the same category availability.
Use categories at the level that makes sense for how your organization reviews and limits applications.
Updating Your Category List #
Your category structure does not have to remain unchanged forever.
As your vendor community changes, you can add categories that better reflect the businesses applying to your events.
Before making significant changes to categories already in use, consider how those changes may affect existing event and vendor records.
Next Step #
Continue to Setting Category Availability and Limits to learn how categories can be enabled, restricted, and limited for individual events.
