Vendors from around the world were outraged after a first-time event organizer promised huge crowds at his Clark County outdoor expo but few people showed up. Hundreds of vendors filled the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds in Ridgefield for the Vancouver Outdoor Expo on March 28-30. In a series of texts shared with The Columbian, event organizer Shane Barbour told Jessica Levin, who ran a booth for self-defense company Damsel in Defense, in early March that he’d pre-sold 38,000 tickets and expected to “hit about 65,000.” Several vendors who spoke to The Columbian estimated no more than 2,000 people came through the show all weekend, including the 300 to 400 vendors in attendance. (Clark County Event Center staff say the venue doesn’t track attendance because event organizers are the ones taking tickets.)

The Columbian did not receive a response to inquiries emailed to Vancouver Outdoor Expo. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday that it is investigating complaints from vendors. “We were expecting a very big show,” said Kristy Sparks from Falling Feathers Lodge in South Dakota. The outfitting company, which leads visitors on hunting trips, sent two staff members from Georgia, one from Tennessee and two more from a sister company in South Africa. The company spent about $10,000 on the expo, including renting a house for the team and shipping out merchandise, Sparks said.

“We didn’t even sell anything,” she said. Her team joined the exodus of vendors who started packing up Saturday night. Given that the event was expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees, C-Tran agreed to run a shuttle from the 99th Street Transit Center to the event center. Nine people used the shuttle on Saturday, C-Tran spokesman Eric Florip said. The agency did not run a shuttle Sunday. Josh Peixoto, owner of the California-based JP Guide Service, said he has never seen vendors leave a show en masse like that weekend. He said he’s likely one of the few vendors who broke even after the show. Kevin Newell, who owns Astoria, Ore.-area fishing charter company Total Fisherman Guide Service, said he has had booths at outdoors shows for nearly 30 years. He said he was not promised a certain level of attendance at the Vancouver Outdoor Expo but assumed at least 10,000 people would show up. Newell said he wouldn’t have rented space had he known attendance would be so sparse. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” he said.