TRAVERSE CITY -- Olivia Jankoski came to last year's Traverse City Film Festival with her family from New Jersey and bought a film festival sweater.
This year the 11-year-old is on the other side of the counter, helping to sell film festival merchandise at the Old Town Playhouse with her mom, Robyn Shephard, who said after attending last year she wanted to get involved.
"We came to the film festival last year and loved it," she said. "We were only here for a few days though, so this year we rented a house specifically so we could participate in the film festival."
Festival merchandise is sold at each of the event's five locations. Merchandise manager Mark Jensen said that sales used to be organized from the festival office, but this year the sites are managing their own sales.
"All the venues are more self-reliant than in the past," Jensen said. "It was too difficult for a couple of people in the office to control what was going on at each venue."
While there are normal promotional items such as T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers, there's also less usual products like camp chairs.
"Obviously, the number one seller is T-shirts. Everybody buys T-shirts," Jensen said.
Although it's too early to determine whether sales are up or down, Jensen said it's looking good so far.
"I've had a couple calls from venues that we're out of this or out of that," he said. "I stock pretty well, so if they're out of something it means that they're doing really well."
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