2017-003-Thorp Mill Town Historical Pres.

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•Joseph's Grainery:The partnership of the Thorp Mill with this Washington-based,family owned wheat farm and grain has been extraordinarily successful.Joseph's Grainery products are sold at the Mill and help support museum operations.The company has offered support and promotional materials to the Thorp Mill for events such as the auction and antique market. •A Simple Life Magazine:A nationally distributed lifestyle magazine.A Simple Life,focuses on country antiques and folk art,history and pioneer life.The magazine is supports museum operations and the Thorp Mill Museum is the first and only distribution point in Washington for the magazine.A Simple Life magazine helps present and promote antique events such as the "Days of the Pioneer,"an antique market and event supporting the Museum of Appalachia in Eastern Tennessee.Continued development our partnership with A Simple Life will enable the Thorp Mill to reach a wide audience well beyond the immediate region. •Other Partnerships:Thorp Mill Antiques Market partnered with a number of other local businesses,particularly small-businesses in the past few years.These include (in 2015)two independently-owned food trucks-the EIIensburg-based Tacos Chalitos and Clarkston-based Kenzie's Coffee,and (in 2016)the Ellensburg-based restaurant The Valley Café.We hope to expand such partnerships in the coming years,particularly with more Kittitas County based food trucks and providers.In 2015,we also contracted with EIIensburg-based Simplified Technologies,LLCto supply wireless internet service for the event,allowing businesses to run credit cards and giving appraisers the ability to research items they assessed.Further,for advertising purposes,we worked with Yakima-based American Primitives Market to co- promote our event statewide in 2016. •Potential Partnerships:Ample space at Thorp School allows for activities that can complement our show and attract additional customers.We are exploring the possibility of vehicle shows on the grounds that same day.Groups contacted include the Vintage Campers Club and the DId-Time iron Club.Both have expressed interest.We expect our negotiations with those organizationsto be complete before the public Lodging Tax Meeting in November. 6.Please explain what plans exist to allow this project to become self-sustaining.Include any plans for ticket sales,event sponsors,and other cost-recovery models. Unlike the Mill's annual auction,which is in its 26th year,the Antiques Show is an iterative work in progress.Our second year of the show fell short of our initial projections for reasons expressed in question #3:primarily,that we scheduled the 2016 event on the same weekend as the Clayson Farms show.This limited our number and quality of vendors,which in turn limited visitor turnout. Also,we cut our advertising budget by over 15%.By choosing a unique weekend for 2017 we feel confident that we can begin an upward spiral of better vendors attracting more visitors which will attract more vendors in future years.Having used the complete public areas of the new Thorp School this year,we plan to expand our venue in 2019 or sooner to use the old Thorp School as well.Having received positive feedback from vendors this year,we plan to gradually increase our entry and vendor charges to match those in competing well-established shows.Profitability in our first two years and projections for the next three years are shown in the table below. County-wide Lodging Tax Application P a ge |16