Vendors return to Laconia Motorcycle Week year after year, a 'favorite'

LACONIA — Vendors from as far away as Florida set up each year at all the nation’s largest motorcycle rallies and rake in the dough selling gear and other odds and ends. This year, many of them made the trip for Laconia Motorcycle Week. Vendor fees support demands on city services during the event.

Marci Miles of Lakewood, Florida, runs the Sunglass Connection, where she sells specialized eyewear intended for motorcyclists. She comes up to Laconia every year and said it’s her favorite of the “big three”: Laconia Motorcycle Week, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota and Daytona Bike Week in her adopted home of Florida.

“I’m not a gypsy — I have a home,” she said. “I’ve always had a home in Florida.”

This year marks her 42nd appearance at the Laconia rally, which she says is also one of her most lucrative events of the year.

“It is a long way but I’m originally from the Boston area and I love coming back up here and seeing my peeps,” Miles said. “Years ago, after I graduated college up here, I moved down to Florida and my dad retired early from his lifelong job. We were bored down there so we just started a little business in the flea market and noticed that the sunglasses sold better than anything else we had. From that point we just did glasses and we started doing events and we grew and grew and grew, and here we are.”

Miles works about six months of the year peddling her wares at major motorcycle rallies across the country. She was in Daytona earlier this year and plans to attend the rally in Sturgis next month.

“We go to all the major motorcycle rallies in the country,” Miles said, adding that Laconia Motorcycle Week is her personal favorite of the bunch. “This one, for sure. ... The rain for one, that makes it very special, but I think it’s really just the beautiful scenery I get to look at all day from my booth and the people are just so good to me here. They’ve been loyal customers for years and years and years, and they come back to me and I take care of them and they take care of me. That’s really the gist of it.”

Over the four decades she’s attended Motorcycle Week, she’s noticed a lot of change, primarily the introduction and exit of various vendors at the event.

“A lot of businesses come and go and there’s probably 15 of us that have been in it for the long haul, some of the leather companies, a couple of other eyeglass companies,” she said. “For me it’s steady Eddie, and it’s been because of the loyalty of the customers at each rally.”

The city's piece of the pie

Fees charged to both the owners of the property which host vendors and to individual vendors themselves are paid to the city through licensing at the clerk’s office. The fees are intended to offset expenses relative to city services like the fire, police and public works departments. Fees charged to property owners are coordinated through the planning department. Any profit above city expenses is used fund Motorcycle Week-related services.

Property owners who host vendors pay a special events fee ranging from $350 for 1-10 vendors to $500 for 26-50 vendors. A property hosting more than 50 vendors will pay a $1,000 fee, as would one hosting a beer tent.

Individual vendors are subject to a $600 application fee, a $75 food inspection fee, if applicable, and a $550 entertainment or outdoor loudspeaker license, among other small fees, like a late application charge.

In 2023, the city garnered about $140,000 from vendor permits and the use of the Laconia Motorcycle Week trademark. The figure for 2024 was just over $110,000 as of Wednesday. Final numbers will be after the conclusion of the event.

Laconia's rally stands out

Biker’s Pride, another Florida business, travels much the same route as Miles, attending the motorcycle rallies throughout the country. They sell apparel and maintain a busy tent on the boardwalk at the Weirs. 

Riley Murphy, of Daytona Beach, Florida, works as the manager and arrived in Laconia on June 3, from Sturgis, where she was busy setting up a store for their upcoming rally. She’ll be headed to South Dakota at the end of Laconia Motorcycle Week.

“It’s cool, it’s actually really fun because we’re from Florida so it’s cool to experience the mountains, the views,” Murphy said. “I like meeting all of the different people from all over the place.”

Murphy said she prefers the rally in Laconia to others she attends each year.

“Laconia is my favorite,” she said, noting the rally in Sturgis is her company’s most lucrative. “It’s just, like, the view really. I hate the weather here but the view is nice. Sturgis is my second favorite.”

It’s the people in Laconia that set the rally apart from others around the country, she said. 

“I actually have a lot of customers that come back and look specifically for me, and that makes me feel nice, and it’s mainly here,” she said. “A lot of my customers do follow me to the rallies and they specifically look for me so that’s cool, too.”

While many vendors serve food and drink or sell motorcycle-themed apparel, Roy Kinzler of Coats and Crests offers handmade family crests, hand-stitched in Europe.

“We do the history of family last names and their coat of arms shields,” Kinzler said. “We have folks overseas that handmake the embroideries of people’s family coat of arms shield.”

Kinzler, who grew up in Massachusetts, traveled up from Florida with a business partner to take part in Laconia Motorcycle Week this year.

“We’ve been doing the normal, traditional gifts for years now. The company’s been going since 1985, but we came up with the idea to start getting our team that makes these for us to start making them smaller,” he said. “Instead of just matting and framing things, you could take it and trim it around and put it on your motorcycle vest.”

They make the most in sales at the rally in Sturgis each year but attend all the major rallies.

“We only hit the big ones, this is my third year here,” he said, adding the Sturgis rally is his favorite. “This is nice for the guys who want to ride around the mountains and the lakes."