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ANIME
SUPERCON 2007 Show Report
Posted
5/25/07
*Sigh* I really would like to say this was a
good show, but frankly it wasn't. There were
some good things that came out of it, but overall
for a local show, it was simply terrible for
us. This was produced by the same guy who did
Florida SuperCon, and despite his best attempts,
we just found ourselves having issue after issue.
Without going into the specific list of problems,
I'll say that most of the issues were resolved
the first day. Unfortunately, one of the major
problems was an air conditioning vent dripping
right onto our table, which apparently was happening
at some other tables in the room as well, but
wasn't resolved and became an ongoing issue
all three days.
Our booth setup, we had Mythix Studios on our
left and Mikey's Toys on our right.
This show was my first strictly-anime themed
event. Usually shows that include anime also
have comics, toys and other related themes,
but this was about 85% anime. If you don't know,
the majority of anime fans are young. Real young.
Like pre-pubescent young. Oh, and mostly girls.
So that's not necessarily a bad thing if you
sell stuffed animals. Kids like cuddly renditions
of their favorite anime and video game characters.
I'll tell you that the vendors that did have
plush toys did very, very well.
Also, kids don't particularly have a lot of
money to begin with. Worse, the hotel ATM was
broken all three days, so that severely limited
the amount of money attendees had to spend.
And obviously, with under-age kids running about,
selling adult prints was practically impossible.
So, dissapointingly, the first two days were
a sales bust for us. I found out from talking
with other vendors that the majority of them
did not do well either. Saturday night we came
home, resolved to figure out a way to salvage
the third and final day.
I stayed up all night drawing something specifically
for the show crowd. By 3am, I had an illustration
of the video game Kingdom Heart's main character
Sora, sitting shirtless and sexy with his famed
keyblade. Further into the wee hours of the
morning, I printed, prepped and packed a bunch,
excited that I had come up with a way to turn
the show around.
With almost no sleep, I pushed the shirtless
Sora all day Sunday. I showed him to every kid
that walked by with a Kingdom Hearts plushie,
costume, sword replica, necklace or action figure.
And it worked! Sora was a huge hit, and it helped
draw in people who purchased other items as
well. Plus, I had the shirtless Squall to go
along with him. Of course, I then had fangirls
screaming for me to draw their other favorites
from the game, Sephiroth, Axel, Roxas and Riku.
Maybe in the future...
I am happy to say that next to Sora, my original
werewolf character drawing, Full Moon,
was our best seller, and I'll be doing many
more from that Monster Men series.
We caught our show neighbor and friend, Mikey,
munching on some hotel restaurant lunch.
Stay away from the chicken fingers... they tasted
like hot dogs.
Sadly, even with Sundays success, the show just
wasn't up to expectations. This was our second
SuperCon, and it doesn't seem like we'll be
doing the third later this year. We'll give
this particular show some time to grow and solve
some of its growing pains before we consider
doing it again.
See you at the next show!
-- Brian
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