[Dan Frazier #96]

I would like to thank the buyers and vendors who attended the 1st Annual Kalamazoo Racers Swap Meet and helped make it a huge success. As a co-promoter of the event I was happy to learn that buyers and vendors were pleased with the event. We are already planning the 2nd Annual Swap Meet and have a tentative date set for Saturday, November 8, 2008.

I would like to thank all of the businesses that donated items for the door prize raffle as it was very popular. Ralph Wine won the 2008 Kalamazoo Speedway General Admission Pass and Del Heckleman won the 2008 M-40 Speedway General Admission Pass. Sonny Coito was the winner of Dan Logan’s 327 Engine Raffle.

Being a first year event, we learned what worked well and what did not. We plan to make a few adjustments for 2008 to make things even beter. All of our indoor vendors were happy that we had a forklift and skids on site to load their items onto in the parking lot when they arrived. Items were then transported by the forklift into the building and were set down next to the vendors booth. There were several positive comments about the forklift and we plan to offer this service again in 2008.

Although we handed out fliers at Harford, Butler, and Crystal we did not see many dirt racers. In addition to promoting the event to more dirt racers, we are going to welcome drag racers, something that we did not do this year.

Our largest change will focus around the event hours. This year the event was advertised as open for vendors from 6-9 am and open to the public from 9am-6pm. We learned that we had just enough time for vendors to set up their booths and that most of the shoppers arrived from 9-11am. We are planning to change the hours for 2008 to make things better for everyone. This year we had vendors come from as far away as Canada and Indianapolis. Because of this, we are reserving the indoor building for Friday afternoon so that vendors have enough time to set up their booths. We will also shorten the show hours on Saturday so that the show will close in the early afternoon. Most vendors reported that they had sold everything they were going to sell by noon.