Post #748321 by Don The Beachcomber on Fri, Jul 31, 2015 7:26 PM

Vendors, Friends & Patrons,

There have been some recent comments made regarding the International Tiki Market Place, which we wanted to clear up and set the record straight.

The event was originally brought forth by Art Snyder & Vicki Bassham (Mrs Bamboo Ben) and it was originally labeled the “Tiki Swapmeet”. After some serious thinking, Art wanted to mirror the International Market Place, which was based in Waikiki and founded by Don the Beachcomber himself, hence the name 'International Tiki Market Place.' Unfortunately, Vicki Bassham (Mrs Bamboo Ben) was not able to take reign of the event due to her heavy schedule. After all of the discussions and Art's persistence, he still wanted to see the event flourish. He needed a lead person to coordinate vendors and essentially be our front person for the event. At the time, Art entrusted Chris Garland for that role and saw him as a viable option to move the event forward. The guidelines were drawn up and as a management fee Chris/ Karen Garland would derive 10% of total Alcohol and Beverage sales during the marketplace ($500-$800 per event). The vendor's fees would be collected by Chris/Karen Garland and allocated to pay for the bands, printing of the postcards and any extra money leftover would be kept by them. The space was never rented from us or did we collect any fee’s associated with the Marketplace except for the $10 charge which would go towards food & beverage consumption.

Since the very first event, Chris/Karen Garland have been paid for every International Tiki Marketplace as an agent/employee of the venue to facilitate the event as a contractor of Don the Beachcomber. Again, they did not rent the space at any point in time or assume any of the risk if attendance was down.
As the event started to grow in popularity Chris/ Karen Garland started to exude a certain control over the Marketplace that would eventually diminish the working relationship with Don the Beachcomber. It’s as if, your employer put you in charge of a project, gave you clear instructions on how to proceed with the project, and once your employer wanted to guide or redirect the project you would then quit and walk off with the idea.

To be clear, we did not force them out of the venue. There was a meeting held a few days ago with Chris/ Karen Garland and Delia Snyder (Owner of DTB), informing them that we would need to reformat the collecting of vendor fees as our CPA has advised us to do and would have to do the collecting of vendors in-house; so that we may properly account for the revenue being exchanged on our property to comply with Federal Tax Revenue Codes. We informed them that if any additional money was left over after paying the entertainment, printing of the postcards and any other overhead, we would gladly add it to their management fee so that it could be properly accounted for, so in essence the only change would be the accounting of vendor fee’s.

A day after that meeting, Chris/ Karen Garland sent Don the Beachcomber notice that they would be canceling the event on September 12th. We never intended to remove them from the event, even after we had learned about Chris/ Karen Garland's trademark application filing of the International Tiki Market Place name, which is currently being disputed. He also refuses to hand over the Facebook page for the International Tiki Marketplace, a Don the Beachcomber property.
The International Tiki Marketplace has grown and succeeded and we are not afraid to praise Chris/ Karen Garland for their hard work. They truly embodied the Ohana spirit of the event and did a great job in managing it. After their repeated actions of insubordination we had no other choice but to severe ties with them.

We are not looking to create animosity or have people chose sides over this matter. The world is big enough for many Market Places and that’s the beauty of the free market system. But the name and foundation of the event is close to our hearts because it’s one of the last events that Arthur Snyder coordinated. Since his passing in 2012, there isn’t a moment that doesn’t go by that we aren’t reminded of what big shoes we’ve had to fill.

We understand how some of you may conceive this to be their event since they were hired to be the hosts of the event on behalf of Don the Beachcomber and we, never in a million years thought that they would turn it against us but hopefully this will clarify some of the misconceptions. We truly wish Chris/ Karen Garland the best. How it all unraveled is an unfortunate situation, but nevertheless, business must move forward.

We hope to see you at the next International Tiki Marketplace at Don the Beachcomber.