Planner and venue partnerships

Planners and venues decide which décor, floral and rental companies their clients hear about first. Learn to build a transparent trade programme, give venues a reason to recommend you, and keep your place on every list within Canadian disclosure and anti-spam rules.

Read the transcript

Planner and venue partnerships.

Most clients do not search for a rental company first.

They book a venue, often hire a planner, and then ask both of them, "Who do you recommend for décor?" The answer to that question is worth more than any ad you will ever buy.

What planners and venues need from you.

Planners and venues recommend vendors who make their own jobs easier and their clients happier.

They are not looking for the cheapest or the most fashionable.

A trade programme for planners.

Planners use décor companies differently from couples.

They order more often, they need prices they can build into proposals, and they bring clients who are already committed to spending.

Becoming a venue's décor partner.

Venues control access to the room, the client and often the vendor list.

Many have a recommended or preferred vendor list, and some sell décor packages to their couples that a partner company supplies.

Worked example: what a partnership is worth.

Thistle and Trestle, the illustrative Burlington company, has one planner partner and one venue partner.

The numbers are illustrative.

A partner kit and a routine.

Have this kit ready to send the day a planner or venue shows interest:

Your trade sheet or venue package terms

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Design a trade programme for planners with a clear, transparent pricing model
• Create a venue partner kit and a dressed-room look book that earns a place on a venue's list
• Calculate what a partnership is worth and decide what you can afford to offer for it

Most clients do not search for a rental company first. They book a venue, often hire a planner, and then ask both of them, “Who do you recommend for décor?” The answer to that question is worth more than any ad you will ever buy. Your job is to become the easy, safe, obvious answer.

What planners and venues need from you

Planners and venues recommend vendors who make their own jobs easier and their clients happier. They are not looking for the cheapest or the most fashionable. They want:

• Reliability. You arrive in the load-in window, finish on time, and strike without leaving a single zip tie behind.
• Speed. Quotes in one business day, answers to availability questions in hours, and a catalogue they can check at night.
• Respect for the room. No tape on heritage walls, no open flame where it is banned, no blocked fire exits or ramps.
• Paperwork on time. A certificate of insurance before the event, the venue named if asked, and a contact on the day who answers the phone.
• Something that makes them look good. Photos of their rooms at their best, and clients who thank them for the recommendation.

Notice that most of that list is behaviour, not marketing. Marketing gets you the first introduction. Behaviour gets you the second.

A trade programme for planners

Planners use décor companies differently from couples. They order more often, they need prices they can build into proposals, and they bring clients who are already committed to spending. A simple trade programme formalizes that relationship.

Choose one of three pricing models and state it plainly:

Whichever you choose, put it in a one-page trade sheet with the terms: who qualifies, the discount or commission, payment terms, how orders are placed, and your lead times in peak season. Give planners a trade login or a line sheet with dimensions and stock levels, so they can build proposals without waiting for you.

Becoming a venue’s décor partner

Venues control access to the room, the client and often the vendor list. Many have a recommended or preferred vendor list, and some sell décor packages to their couples that a partner company supplies. Three ways in:

1. The dressed-room look book. Dress the venue’s own room for free on a quiet weekday, have it photographed, and give the venue a set of images with a licence to use them. A venue coordinator who can show couples their ballroom fully dressed will mention your name every time they show it.
2. The venue package. Offer the venue a ready-made package, such as a ceremony arch, aisle décor and head table, that it can sell at a set price. You supply it at an agreed trade price, and the venue earns the difference. Write the inclusions and the terms down, including who handles changes and damage.
3. The venue cheat sheet. A one-page guide to the room from a décor point of view: ceiling heights, rigging points if any, what fits through the door, how many tables of each size fit, and which of your collections suit the space. Coordinators use it in tours.

Worked example: what a partnership is worth

Thistle & Trestle, the illustrative Burlington company, has one planner partner and one venue partner. The numbers are illustrative.

• The planner places 12 orders a year at an average of $2,400 before discount, for $28,800. At a 50 percent gross margin, that is $14,400. The 10 percent trade discount costs $2,880, leaving $11,520 of margin.
• The venue sells 25 ceremony packages a year at $1,200 to its couples. Thistle & Trestle supplies each at a trade price of $950, so it earns $23,750 in revenue, and the venue keeps $250 a package, or $6,250. At the same margin on the trade price, Thistle & Trestle’s margin is $11,875. Eight of those couples then add reception décor, averaging $1,600 each, which is another $12,800 of revenue.

Compare that with the cost of finding 37 clients on your own. If paid ads produce leads at $60 each and one in five books, each booking costs $300 in advertising, or $11,100 for 37. The partnerships deliver the same number of bookings with higher order values, and the cost is a discount and a margin share you control.

A partner kit and a routine

Have this kit ready to send the day a planner or venue shows interest:

• Your trade sheet or venue package terms
• A link to your catalogue and a downloadable line sheet
• Your certificate of insurance and its limits
• Three photos of your work in rooms like theirs
• Your load-in and strike standards, in writing
• One named contact, with a phone number that is answered on weekends

Before you offer anything, decide what you will not do. Will you hold inventory for a planner’s tentative date without a deposit? For how long? Will you match a venue’s exclusive supplier on price? Will you supply a partner who pays late? Write these limits down. Partnerships go wrong when a vendor says yes to everything in the first month and resents it by the third.

Then keep the relationship alive. After each shared event, send the partner a few images within a week. Each January, ask venues what changed in their rules or rooms. Each spring, ask planners what their clients asked for that you could not supply. Partners remember the vendor who asks.

In Canada and the GTA

Commissions, discounts and disclosure. Referral commissions, trade discounts and venue package margins are legal and common. The risk lies in hiding them. The Competition Act makes it reviewable conduct to make a representation to the public that is false or misleading in a material respect, and the Competition Bureau has said that an undisclosed material connection between a reviewer and an advertiser, financial or otherwise, is a problem even when the opinion is honest. If a planner recommends you in a blog post, a social post or a published vendor list and you pay them for referrals, that connection should be disclosed. Ad Standards’ Influencer Marketing Disclosure Guidelines treat compensation, discounts and affiliate or referral rewards as material connections and recommend clear labels such as #ad or #[Company]Partner, not #Partner alone. Encourage partners to disclose, and put the expectation in your trade sheet. See the Bureau’s Deceptive Marketing Practices Digest. This is general information, not legal advice.

Emailing planners and venues. A message that promotes your services to a planner or venue is a commercial electronic message under CASL. CASL’s business-to-business exemption covers messages between organizations that already have a relationship, about the receiving organization’s activities, but contact between two individuals alone does not create one. For first contact, you can rely on an address the person has conspicuously published, if it has no statement refusing commercial messages and your message relates to their role, such as a venue sales manager’s address on the venue website. A business card handed to you at a wedding show can also support implied consent. Include your business name, mailing address and contact details and an unsubscribe link, and honour unsubscribes within 10 business days. Read the CRTC’s CASL guidance.

Accessibility on site. Under the AODA’s customer service standard, every organization in Ontario with at least one employee must provide accessible customer service, including welcoming support persons and service animals, allowing assistive devices and giving notice of temporary disruptions. Venues take this seriously. Décor that blocks a ramp, narrows an accessible route or fills an accessible washroom with stored crates creates a problem for the venue and for guests. Keep routes clear, and add this to your written load-in standards. See Ontario’s accessibility rules for businesses.

Photos of the venue. When you dress a venue’s room for a look book, the photographer owns copyright in the images by default, as for any photo taken since November 7, 2012. Arrange a written licence that covers you and the venue, so the venue can use the images in its own marketing.

Local practice

Many GTA venues refresh their preferred vendor lists and host open houses ahead of the January and February wedding shows, so the fall is the time to propose a look book shoot or a venue package. Downtown hotels often have in-house décor or exclusive suppliers for some items, union rules on who may rig or move certain equipment, and fixed dock times. Ask before you pitch rather than after. Heritage venues, galleries and museums in Toronto and Hamilton frequently restrict open flame, haze, wall attachments and fresh petals on floors, and some require enclosed candles only. Large banquet halls in Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and Markham host many multi-day cultural weddings and often work with a small circle of trusted décor companies who know their rooms, their stages and their turnaround times between events on the same day. Earning a place in that circle takes reliable strikes, because the next event’s crew is often waiting. Learn each partner venue’s rules once, write them on its cheat sheet, and you will be the vendor the coordinator never has to correct.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)