Wow, well okay these last two weeks have been pure chaos for Dani and I. We got back from Chicago, and had basically two days to sit down and get back on our feet before coming back up to Portland and moving all of our stuff over into the new place. I’ll have another post to detail the new environment and plans, but without further digression here is my take on the Chicago trip and Wizard World’s Comic Convention.
Nineteen hours is a very long time to be driving a car. Of the trip itself I will only say that despite getting to see some new places, my experiences of the Midwest echo everything that I had been told about it from the get go. Its flat, the roads are strait, there is corn, and the people are very friendly. I have no desire to ever make another nearly 24hr car trip in my life, and if I have a say most likely will never drive across any of the states we passed again.
Chicago itself was a different beast, the city is coiled up in the center of a massive urban sprawl of what seems like near endless manufacturing wasteland and economically depressed Midwestern city. Flying by it at about mach 3 (The average speed of a Chicago expressway commuter) made me feel like I was reliving the final moments of the death star, only in broad daylight and with a billboard every two miles telling me about yet another amazing casino hall buffet. After blasting through the city center we made our way to the “Village” of Rosemont, which as it seems to be is nearly entirely composed of the convention center, and about fifty hotels. Excusing the empirical lack of on street parking, and some very rude auxiliary police, Rosemont was home to some fabulous dining, (Check out The Ram, should you ever find yourself there) and an extremely well run convention facility.
Unloading our gear and setting up the both was smooth, and getting into the hotel and mentally prepared for the days ahead went off with nearly no complications. (Thank you Marriott Courtyard) Day one however highlighted some of the challenges of doing one of these conventions for the first time.
The event itself was broken up into three sections, retail vendors and exhibitors, panels for famous people, and the “Artists Alley”. The first major hurtle we had to overcome was that we had elected to set up shop in the exhibitors and retail section rather then with the artists. The thinking was that the merchandise we had would seem more legitimate, and we would have more space to operate if we were in the vendor section, then we would in the independent artists market. The case was more accurately put that we didn’t have nearly enough merchandise to fill the cube of space we were given, and altering the shopping traffic pattern of people by placing handmade goods and art in among t-shirts and comics wasn’t the best plan. It was kinda uphill at fist to establish how to pitch our goods to people who were set in a mode of finding their beloved Spiderman Issue #335, or searching for that perfect Leaf Village headband to complete their Naruto cosplay. That being said the convention goers were well financed and had plenty of time, so as the weekend wore on we had quite a bit of repeat business.
Dani’s Hot Cross Bunnehs were an instant hit, and we had sold every one of the rag dolls by the end of the four days. Her other handmade Bunnehs did very well on sticker sales, but not as good with the stuff animal variety, I attribute this to two factors, first the character was new to everyone, and second everyone was poor. The Warcraft fan art I brought with me got a lot of attention on the first day, but no sales, so I quickly adapted the illustrations over to sketch cards (Baseball Card sized print outs) and sold them for two bucks a piece, and those things moved. Megan’s jewelry did steady business as well, but the second big snag after our location, was the investment we had made in 8/10 prints.
People wanted Posters or sketch cards, and the business for 8/10′s, outside of characters the audience was familiar with, was non-existent. All told two 8/10′s sold after the four days. In terms of cost, Dani and I finished in the black for the trip, although after some minor impulse buys, and feeding ourselves not by much, this was also mainly due to the patronage of our friend Megan Walker who financed the lion’s share of the trip.
Defining success for the convention can be done a few different ways, and I think no matter how you split it we did very well. We made some sales, networked new art commissions and contacts, got to see a huge number of nerds, and brows through an amazing assortment of geek merchandise for four full days of gorgeous weather. I think given the experience I would love to do another convention, but the next time I would be making quite a few changes to how I went about it, and that shows that we learned from this one, which for me is the most valuable part of the trip.
