2010 IE-CFM History
Images of the 2010 Event may eventually be added below !
The second annual Inland Empire Coral Farmers MarketSM event on September 19th 2010 was another successful event. This event occurred right after another very slow 2010 summer business season. It appears that the California economy is more sluggish then the rest of the nation. We did experience a few vendor cancellations due to this slow economy. Public participation however was almost as strong as in 2009. We again offered free attendance to the public to boost participation for the vendors. We did have a problem with the door ticket count. For a period of about 30 minutes the door was unattended. There were 353 door tickets passed out and we estimate that 25 to 50 attendees were missed. That would put the door count at 378 to 403. In 2009 we passed out 402 door tickets. So we were close to last years attendance. With the vendor ticket count at 74 the total attendance for the event was somewhere between 452 and 477. Very close to last year. While we had a few less vendors for this event, we were very pleased with the public attendance. This years crowd seemed to arrive a little later, but the ballroom had a decent crowd all day long. Even with a few less vendors, the captive grown coral selection was the best to be found on the West Coast. Buyers however seemed to spend more time doing comparison shopping. Many of the vendors noted that high ticket items did not sell very strongly this year. That is understandable considering the current shape of the California economy. Some of the vendors did have low priced captive coral and they seemed to be very busy packing up corals throughout the day. We anticipate that the California coral market will remain a buyers market for at least a couple of years. The operation of this event was completely flawless. We would again like to thank the Inland Empire Marine Aquarium Society for their superb efforts with installing and breaking down our infrastructure. It appears that the Inland Empire Coral Farmers MarketSM company actually made a small profit for this event even with the few vendor cancellations.
IE-CFM and CFM Staff
We would like to thank the following companies or individuals who have donated either products or services to the 2010 Inland Empire Coral Farmers MarketSM event. These companies and individuals help to make this event a success !