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So, my husband and I vended at San Japan this last weekend. It was awesome. We went last year, but not as vendors, just as regular attendees, and I decided then that I'd like to try vending this year. It's a small-ish (4000 people last year, 5000 this year) local con for us so I figured it would be a good one to start with, since I've never vended anywhere before. I make chainmail jewelry and other accessories (like keychains and cell phone straps) and I also make polymer clay beads and charms. For this con, I really concentrated on making charms of various video game and anime characters, like the power ups from Mario, moogles and chocobos from Final Fantasy, and Pokeballs. (The Pokeballs, BTW, were HUGE! I sold 22 pokeball charms, more than twice as many as any other charms. I had to make more every evening after we went home since I sold out both Friday and Saturday.) I can turn the charms into jewelry and accessories too, like earrings and cell phone straps.
We did GREAT! Like, three times as great as I would ever have hoped for. My polymer clay charms were selling like crazy. They sold much better than the chainmail stuff, which is what I expected. It started right away Friday morning. We got there around 9:30am. The tables they had for the vendors already had table clothes, but I didn't know this so I brought my own. I liked mine better so the first thing we did was set that up. As we were laying the table cloth out, someone walked up and asked us how much we were selling it for! I told her it wasn't for sale...it was something my mom got for me a few years ago and I don't know where she got it and wasn't sure if I could replace it or not, and it's too cool and unique to sell. I think my husband was a little disappointed, because he said he would have sold it, but we made up for it pretty quickly.
As we started setting up our display, lots of people walked up and started looking and stuff and we sold REALLY well Friday morning. It took us several hours to get everything completely set up because people kept walking up to look at and buy stuff and we kept having to stop setting up to actually do business. It was awesome. Friday afternoon was pretty quiet, and I wish I would have taken that time to walk around the rest of the con, since I didn't get a chance to at all the rest of the weekend. Saturday was almost as busy as Friday but it was more spread out (Friday morning was super-busy for about the first 3-4 hours, and then dead for about 4 hours, whereas Saturday was steady pretty much all day except for an hour or two around 6pm.) Sunday I got a lot of special requests for custom chainmail pieces so I was busy pretty much all day making stuff. My husband went to a panel for an hour Sunday afternoon, and right after he left, I got a special request for a custom chainmail piece, and then people kept walking up to buy other stuff I had already made...I was relieved when my husband got back so he could handle the transactions while I concentrated on finishing the custom piece!
Saturday was probably the most fun since a couple friends of ours from Austin came down to hang out with us. The wife, L, makes her own steampunk-inspired jewelry and bottlecap art so she set up some of her stuff on one side of my table. She did really well considering she only had about 1/4 of the table and not all of her merchandise with her. We are thinking that we might do a few other cons in the area (there are a lot of anime cons in Texas) and share a hotel room and table for the non-local cons. It was really great just to hang out with her and her husband for the day too (and her husband made a couple runs to the food court for all of us, which really helped too!)
We had a great time. I was worried my husband would be bored or annoyed (he's not a huge people person) but he said he had a lot of fun. And I had the most fun I've probably ever had at an anime con. We didn't have a single SC that was noteworthy. Everyone was awesome and even though I didn't get to walk around I still saw a lot of cosplayers since they were walking all around artist alley and they basically came to us. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to see the rest of the artist alley and dealer room vendors but now I know next time to take the opportunity to walk around early while I can. We'll definitely be doing it again...I'm already registered for Ikkicon, another con that's held in Austin over New Year's weekend.
We did GREAT! Like, three times as great as I would ever have hoped for. My polymer clay charms were selling like crazy. They sold much better than the chainmail stuff, which is what I expected. It started right away Friday morning. We got there around 9:30am. The tables they had for the vendors already had table clothes, but I didn't know this so I brought my own. I liked mine better so the first thing we did was set that up. As we were laying the table cloth out, someone walked up and asked us how much we were selling it for! I told her it wasn't for sale...it was something my mom got for me a few years ago and I don't know where she got it and wasn't sure if I could replace it or not, and it's too cool and unique to sell. I think my husband was a little disappointed, because he said he would have sold it, but we made up for it pretty quickly.
As we started setting up our display, lots of people walked up and started looking and stuff and we sold REALLY well Friday morning. It took us several hours to get everything completely set up because people kept walking up to look at and buy stuff and we kept having to stop setting up to actually do business. It was awesome. Friday afternoon was pretty quiet, and I wish I would have taken that time to walk around the rest of the con, since I didn't get a chance to at all the rest of the weekend. Saturday was almost as busy as Friday but it was more spread out (Friday morning was super-busy for about the first 3-4 hours, and then dead for about 4 hours, whereas Saturday was steady pretty much all day except for an hour or two around 6pm.) Sunday I got a lot of special requests for custom chainmail pieces so I was busy pretty much all day making stuff. My husband went to a panel for an hour Sunday afternoon, and right after he left, I got a special request for a custom chainmail piece, and then people kept walking up to buy other stuff I had already made...I was relieved when my husband got back so he could handle the transactions while I concentrated on finishing the custom piece!
Saturday was probably the most fun since a couple friends of ours from Austin came down to hang out with us. The wife, L, makes her own steampunk-inspired jewelry and bottlecap art so she set up some of her stuff on one side of my table. She did really well considering she only had about 1/4 of the table and not all of her merchandise with her. We are thinking that we might do a few other cons in the area (there are a lot of anime cons in Texas) and share a hotel room and table for the non-local cons. It was really great just to hang out with her and her husband for the day too (and her husband made a couple runs to the food court for all of us, which really helped too!)
We had a great time. I was worried my husband would be bored or annoyed (he's not a huge people person) but he said he had a lot of fun. And I had the most fun I've probably ever had at an anime con. We didn't have a single SC that was noteworthy. Everyone was awesome and even though I didn't get to walk around I still saw a lot of cosplayers since they were walking all around artist alley and they basically came to us. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to see the rest of the artist alley and dealer room vendors but now I know next time to take the opportunity to walk around early while I can. We'll definitely be doing it again...I'm already registered for Ikkicon, another con that's held in Austin over New Year's weekend.
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