How Kern County Fair reconnected with their community and increased fair attendance.

The Kern County Fair is truly dedicated to celebrating its community, providing a year-round, safe and friendly environment for educational, cultural, and entertainment experiences. While this message resonated with long-time fairgoers, the fair wanted to get more people into the gates.

Located in Bakersfield, California, Kern County Fair hosts a 12-day fair full of carnival rides, rodeos, pig racing, magic shows, monster trucks, livestock shows, auctions and of course, deep-fried fair food. Throughout the rest of the year, people can attend the many interim events (like home & garden shows) hosted at the event center or rent out facilities for private events.

CHALLENGES

As Facility Marketing Manager, Chelsey Roberts oversees all of the fair and event center’s marketing and media advertising as well as the website. In her role she identified the following areas that prior to the partnership with Saffire, were massive opportunities for improvement.

Ticketing

Their ticketing platform was outdated and while it worked for their hardstock tickets, the online platform looked kind of sketchy to the outside customer. The fair unfortunately also had to deal with a couple years of people making fraudulent ticket purchases.

Website

The fairground’s website wasn’t an effective tool for reaching customers, was not easily manageable, and an accompanying mobile app wasn’t downloaded by those attending the fair.

SOLUTIONS

Mobile-friendly, dynamic site

On the Spark platform, we give the power to you to manage your own website. We design responsive sites that will look great no matter where you pull it up from, and you can see a mobile preview while editing a page from your desktop. This also meant Chelsey could begin selling camping spaces and other products on the site.

Ticketing & Website Integration

As the industry’s only integrated platform for both website and ticketing, SaffireTix was the logical solution to switch for online ticketing and box office sales. From their existing Saffire website, ticketing integration meant customers could safely and securely purchase tickets to their fair. Because it’s hosted on a platform using iPhones and iPads, it was easy to train gate staff and temporary workers on the new system.

RESULTS

Increase in online ticketing sales from 2019 to 2021

increase in total online revenue.

increase in attendance.

A WORD

"I'm young in this industry it was really hard at first to get people to initiate change and accept new technology. Saffire is great because they are always trying new and better ways, and deliver quick, tangible results. Partnering with Saffire for my event ticketing and professional website helps me test new ideas and methods while showing real results.

Kern County Fair & Event Center had just made the switch to a Saffire website when I started as an intern in 2015. I got to see our web presence first hand, from it's roots to what it has evolved into today. Saffire has been a dream partner, accepting feedback and helping us make improvements all along the way. I thought our website was easy to manage in 2015, but it's even easier and better today, and that's amazing.

I can't say enough about how valuable our Saffire partnership was in getting through the communication challenges of 2020-2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were so many capacity restrictions and policies we needed to communicate quickly and effectively, it was a breeze to update our beautiful, custom website at the drop of a hat. We can manage our online ticketing strategies just as easily. I can't think of a better partner than Saffire!"

- Chelsey Roberts, Facility & Marketing Manager

FUTURE PLANS

Looking to the future, Kern County Fair wants to expand their partnership with Saffire to their many interim events! Offering the online capabilities of ticketing for events like their home & garden shows can make managing the facility easier and bring more people into the gates on the off season.