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anwo-prinz · 6 years

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ALA Artist Alley post-con writeup

Here’s my general experience from tabling & what I plan to do going forward. Photos also included after the cut. Long post.

So, overall I had a pretty good experience. It was my first western/American artist alley experience, I was curious to try it out after my circle experience for Comic Market 92. Skip this section and scroll down if you just wanna see photos (these are just reposted from twitter though).

The Good:

Had quite a few followers + friends stop by to buy stuff! Thank you so much, seriously - I really appreciated the support because my table would have been dead otherwise..! I also met some GBF artists which made me so happy!

Felt really great to see people have a positive reaction to my merch, just laughing or smiling at the Salty tote or Dont @ Me shirt. My best seller was the shirt & the mugs sold out quite quickly. I sold a decent number of coasters (though I still have way too many lol).

Was a huge learning experience and I feel like all my prepration for organizing & promoting my goods paid off!

Tabling made it really easy for friends to find me - something that isn’t common at cons, usually. People are usually all over the place.

So much space! The pavilion tent was a good choice overall. There was lots of room to walk around for attendees to browse casually since it wasn’t crowded or narrow. Also, even behind the tables there was a lot of space to spread our stuff out as artists! It was also climate controlled & A/C so I appreciated it not being too hot and dank.

AA staff was really cool - the organizer even stopped by my table to apologize about all the miscommunication and bad reactions. They also gave out water to us, and one of my friends was staff so he checked up on me every now and then.

The Bad:

The hours were so long... Friday & Saturday, it was open 10AM-7PM, then Sunday 10AM-5PM. I stayed most of the time and I was very exhausted, and doing it back-to-back for 3 days was rough. I wasn’t used to it, and the chairs were uncomfortable. Plus I didn’t have a table partner... I was also mentally exhausted from having to try to smile & be outgoing with conversation for so long. I’m normally not used to so much interaction face-to-face.

The strong winds on Sunday were really alarming! The whole tent was shaking, the support beams even creaking and moving a bit. It also got pretty chilly at nighttime.

I felt like a lot of the buyers for western artists are still very print-focused consumers? Or perhaps it’s because I’m a new artist without an established western following (I’d say my following is very small/niche due to my fandoms). I was selling coasters/mugs & tote bags/shirts, which I mistakenly thought would do pretty well (I overestimated myself on the bags & coasters). But most of the people who bought stuff from my table seemed to be people who were referred or knew me already, not really any impulse buyers. I thought my prices were quite fair ($5 coaster, $15 tote, and $22 shirt). But people would still have rather bought $15 prints, it seemed. Perhaps there was just a lot of competition because of how many artists were there, so people had to spend money really carefully.

Another thing is that even though people liked my stuff, I think it was harder to sell because the customers browsing might not have felt any attachment to the characters of my merch. Like I thought the Kaede rubber strap would do better but not many people bought it probably because they didn’t know the character, the Narmaya charm did OK though.

Doing stuff from Granblue Fantasy & iDOLM@STER when the fandom isn’t too popular in the west is pretty hard. However, there’s a small but dedicated fan base which helped a lot. A few iM@S Producers stopped by my table, and I was happy to chat with fellow GBF fans who were burnt out after fire guild wars!

In conclusion...

I did make enough from sales to cover all my expenses and also make a bit of profit (surprising especially as a 1st time tabling artist at a western con) so I feel pretty good about it! However, doing the 3-days-in-a-row thing was absolutely awful. I think I’ll stick to single-day events from now on, even if they’re just small events. No Fanime or Anime Expo for me.

I still plan on making stuff from GBF/iM@S just because those are my 2 main fandoms, I don’t really want to expand to making merch for series I’m not super passionate about even if it’d sell better. Just not my style. I am into Type Moon so maybe I’ll also make some FGO stuff on the side too, but not as a main focus.

I’m glad I did have a waitlist open for people who wanted to buy leftover goods, I have a decent amount of stuff that people asked for. I plan to open an online store too (after setting aside some stock for Ronin Expo, just a 1-day event in June in Los Angeles). I want to design more merch! Especially shirts and mugs. Also want to draw another book.

Feels like doing Comike spoiled me for doing cons though... I really would love to try to do an only-event like Cool Star Festiv@l in Japan or another Comike (maybe winter?). Maybe I’ll try it for the future!

Photos!

My table set-up! You can see an example of how the table looks behind me, which is just bare and white, with 2 chairs. The PVC pipe set up, the wire stands, hangers, blue tablecloth, bookstands, etc, are all stuff I brought from home (I got most of the stuff via home depot or daiso). It’s similar to Comike, you just get that little half table and some chairs; the rest you have to bring to set up for yourself.

Close-up for the price tags too.

The 4 shikishis I drew during the convention (3 were commissions, the other was just for fun)!

Lastly, some merch trades I did with new friends!

Sticker sheet: twitter/alyssaucy or tumblr/peachfuel

Neko Lancey keychain: tumblr/deerscritches

Lancelot+Siegfried rose keychain: tumblr/mitikokite

#personal #artist alley #anime los angeles

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