FunTagg
Entrepreneur Steve Riegel on Embracing the Carny Life
For someone who has spent most of his career in product development for technology companies, Steve Riegel of Cary, NC, self-proclaimed “Carny,” feels surprisingly at home working on the midway at a state fair.
In spring 2018, Steve retired after three decades in the technology industry, where he helped pioneer smart card solutions with Motorola and worked with credit card issuers to adopt contactless payment using Near Field Communication (NFC) -- the chip technology that allows both Apple and Android phones to talk to a reader in a payment terminal at a retail store. He also created a contactless payment platform called Flash Cash. “The day I retired, people in the carnival industry came calling because of my experience building a contactless payment platform,” recalls Steve.
He was quickly lured back to the workforce and into the carnival space by event operators who needed an automated and less labor-intensive way to admit patrons rather than hiring numerous ticket takers to sit in a booth and service long lines. While other electronic ticketing options were already on the market, Steve got to work and launched FunTagg, aimed at providing the most technologically advanced, user-friendly electronic ticketing solutions for large-scale events in the country.
Harry Riegel and his father and FunTagg creator Steve Riegel, Will Hughey, and Stephen Caudle (l. to r.) all work hard to make FunTagg a successful and fun business.
FunTagg’s self-service kiosks have an interactive touchscreen that can dispense fair cards or wristbands, scan pre-sale codes, accept cash or credit, give change and receipts, and even text a fair operator’s smartphone when it needs to be serviced. Better yet, the system can’t go down because it operates off-line. FunTagg also offers a much-sought-after consumer mobile app.
Naturally, the job of training fair operators to use the FunTagg system falls to Steve and his team. This requires them to travel around the country and be there in person to demonstrate and troubleshoot the technology. “My son, Harry, works with me, and a handful of other employees help us train the event supervisors,” explains Steve. “We send two people to the opening of a fair, and we don’t leave until they tell us to get off the midway. We really want them to feel comfortable.”
Steve says it is the Carny folk who make his work so enjoyable. “There are a million stories to go along with this little traveling community made up of hundreds of people, some of the hardest-working people I’ve ever encountered,” says Steve. “The jobs are important, and the safety requirements are no joke, and the hours are very, very long.”
Steve grew up in Wilmington, DE, and earned an MBA in Finance from the University of Delaware before embarking on his career. By the time he created FunTagg, the seasoned entrepreneur knew what he needed from a bank. It was just a matter of finding it.
“When I started FunTagg, I was with another bank, and I had a lot of difficulty. I was told by another entrepreneur, ‘Steve, I’m going to make your life a lot easier.’ He referred me to TowneBank commercial banker Kristin Sutton and said, ‘I promise you will be happy.’ And I’ve been incredibly happy,” says Steve. “With the other bank I tried, everything was too pricey, everything was impersonal, everything took forever. It’s the opposite with TowneBank. They are like friends. Kristin is outstanding and always looking to find ways to help me.”
Fair season is right around the corner, though Steve says his calendar stays full year-round. “All of the big state fairs are in the fall, but carnivals go up all the time. There’s the San Antonio Rodeo and Stock Show in the spring, that’s a big one. The South Florida Fair, Florida State Fair, and Central Florida Fair all go off in the spring because it’s too hot to have a summertime event and even fall is still too hot down there. But all of the biggest state fairs are in the fall. The biggest fair in the country is the Texas State Fair, but other big ones we go to are North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Nebraska, New York, and the list goes on.”
Today, just six years from its inception, FunTagg is on track to be used at almost half of the top 50 biggest fairs in the country during 2024. “We’ve been more than doubling our revenue every year these past few years, which has been really exciting,” says Steve. “I think we have two to three more years of some really good growth. There is definitely opportunity for expansion into other venues, such as music festivals and other events that pick up and move, like PGA Tour events. Right now, we’re busy just doing the fairs.” 
“I’ve spent the majority of my career in this weird technology, contactless payment, and I just like it,” concludes Steve. “It’s an unusual business. And you know, with FunTagg, one of the most interesting things about this line of work is that now when people ask what I do, I can say, ‘I’m a Carny, that’s what I am!’”
For more information visit FunTagg.com.
The North Carolina State Fair, a 172-year tradition in the Tar Heel State, is set for Oct. 17-27, 2024, at the fairgrounds in Wake County, 15 minutes west of downtown Raleigh. Organized by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the fair attracts close to a million visitors each year. For more info, visit NCStateFair.org.