Eventeny helps CultureFest NC scale attendance 800%

CultureFest NC in Oxford, North Carolina grew from 600 attendees to more than 7,000 in three years after organizer Cathy Anna rebuilt operations on Eventeny. Anna says the platform saves her about 100 hours per festival as she manages vendors, mapping, scheduling and check-in largely on her own.

Why it matters: - CultureFest NC’s growth shows how a single organizer can scale a local festival without a large in-house staff. - Event management software is taking over tasks that often consume days of manual work, especially vendor coordination and site logistics. - The festival’s use of one shared map with police, fire and the sheriff’s department shows how event tools can affect public-safety planning, not just back-office work.

What happened: - CultureFest NC, a cultural festival in Oxford, North Carolina, grew from 600 attendees to more than 7,000 in three years after Cathy Anna took over the event from a nonprofit. - Attendance rose from 600 the year before Anna took over to 3,500 in her first year, about 5,100 in her second year and 7,100 this year. - Anna moved vendor communication, event maps, scheduling and check-in onto Eventeny after her previous software could not keep up with the festival’s scale. - Anna says the switch saves her about 100 hours of work per festival.

The details: - Vendor participation increased from about 60 vendors to more than 100 this year. - Anna runs CultureFest NC with contract help and volunteers rather than a dedicated events team. - Anna previously handled many festival tasks through spreadsheets and individual vendor emails. - CultureFest NC uses a single live event map in Eventeny. - Anna shares that map with local police, fire and the sheriff’s department to coordinate barricades and road closures. - Anna said, “The mapping and the layouts, having all of this in one place, it's the Holy Grail for an event planner. I don't know of any other software that does what you do.” - Anna also said, “I probably save about 100 hours by using Eventeny.” - Two other Granville County organizations, the Bee Jubilee and Granville Gardeners, switched to Eventeny on Anna’s recommendation. - Eventeny is an event management platform that combines ticketing, vendor management, scheduling and guest logistics in one system. - Eventeny says its founders built the company after watching their sister, an event planner, struggle with manual work. - Eventeny says it has processed more than a million applications from vendors, artists and exhibitors. - Eventeny says it can save organizers up to four months of manual work a year. - Eventeny’s customer list includes GalaxyCon, Fanatics Fest, the Florida Renaissance Festival and CultureFest NC. - The release includes Eventeny social links on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X.

Between the lines: - The biggest gain is not just attendance growth. It is operational compression, with one person managing a festival that would normally require more staff support. - The recommendation ripple to other Granville County groups suggests the platform is winning users through organizer-to-organizer trust, not just marketing. - The public-safety map use case suggests event software is becoming part of field operations, not only registration and vendor admin.

What's next: - CultureFest NC is likely to keep relying on Eventeny as attendance and vendor counts grow. - Anna’s recommendations could bring more local events onto the platform if other organizers look for similar workflow savings. - Eventeny is likely to keep positioning itself around reducing manual planning time for festivals and large community events.