Advice for a Newbie Vendor

[Toast]

[Kris@WLP]

Answers:

If you have a friend who's able to be at the convention with you and willing to watch your table for free (aside from admission and lodging), good. Most vendors with any choice have at least two people for the very problems you list.

But let's presume it's going to be just you, or you plus a hired assistant.

First and foremost: remember that THIS IS WORK. THIS IS MEANT TO MAKE A PROFIT.

Hiring an assistant is tricky. If your assistant would not come to the event except to oblige you, then admission, food and lodging isn't sufficient. Given the amount of time taken out of the person's life for your benefit, the absolute least you should pay the assistant is $100 for one day or $200 for the whole weekend PLUS food and lodging. Considering that a convention workday will run at LEAST ten hours, and longer in artist's alley setups, this is at or slightly below minimum wage if your assistant were working hourly. If this amount doesn't fit into your financial scheme, then you can't afford an assistant.

If you do get a friend to help you on the cheap, you both need to get together and work out a schedule. Your free-labor friend is almost certainly coming to see the convention, which means they will have panels, events, etc. they want to catch. Discuss them as soon as you can get a con schedule in hand. Be damn clear about when you do and don't expect each other to be at the booth. You, however, should limit your time away from the booth as much as possible... because one of the main points of having a booth is so that people can come and find YOU, not your assistant.

As for leaving your table when you don't have a helper: DON'T. If you absolutely cannot put off a potty break, ask a neighboring vendor to watch your booth while you make the quickest run you can; most other vendors will oblige as much as they can. It's not difficult to sneak some small snacks past even the most rigid "no outside food" venues if you plan ahead, but as a general rule this will make the potty issue worse. If you can stand it, the best plan is to eat a very large breakfast of some kind and a decent dinner after you close for the day. Aside from emergencies, NEVER get out of line-of-sight of your booth, and preferably stay in it if there's even the slightest chance of a customer coming along to browse.

THIS IS IMPORTANT- DO NOT OVER-SKIMP ON FOOD. Ramen noodles will NOT suffice. You're going to be putting in long hours on short sleep among a lot of people who showed up sick as a dog rather than give up the hundreds of dollars they spent in advance for the event. Get at least one meal a day with actual VEGETABLES in. No, the dehydrated colorful flecks in a cup noodle don't count. Burgers with extra veggies are probably good enough, but if you're doing well go ahead and splurge on a sit-down meal at least once during the con.

GET SOME SLEEP. Know how much sleep you absolutely need to be able to function acceptably as a retailer, and GET it. This is doubly important for artist's alley, since you'll need to get up VERY early, especially on Saturday, to take advantage of the hour before dealer's room opens. If you skimp on decent food and sleep, then by Sunday you WILL have the con crud or some other disease.

Finally, as per your display: for an artist's alley display, it's best to keep any standing displays on the table on the back half of the table, so as not to block view of your neighbors. Behind-table displays like shelves, extra tables, banner stands, etc. are better. Aside from this, use every square inch of your assigned space... because if you don't, your neighbors WILL encroach. This is a little rude, but it's also common practice for con vendors. We're a bit like hermit crabs, in that we expand to occupy whatever space we can find.

BE WARNED that most artist's alley space is unsecured, which means you're going to have to pack up all your merchandise and anything else you don't want to risk being stolen or vandalized every night and set it back up every morning. Plan your displays accordingly; any AA displays should be either disposable, easy and quick to pack and transport, or either tough or pointless to mess with.

[Toast]

Thanks for taking the time to craft such a comprehensive response! I was getting all twitchy from "nobody loves me" anxiety, but I can see that this has been percolating that whole while, and I'm grateful for it. The guide is so complete that hopefully others will be able to use it too.

For that reason, I suggest you put it up elsewhere too. More than just me should benefit from it.

[Kris@WLP]

[Toast]

[bar1scorpio]

For food- hit up the grocery store for stuff you can eat without cooking. Party trays are rather nice, especially if they have cheeze, meat & veggies. You can nibble off of one of those all day long. The thing is, when it comes to food, so often part of the trip out is a fun run into some favorite cheese house, beef jerky store, out-of-state grocery store that has stuff unlikely to be found at home.

ALWAYS TRY THE REGIONAL POPS. I'd have never discovered or if I hadn't made this a policy.

On displays, GO VERTICAL. There's plenty of ways to do this on a reasonable budget. I've long used a series of wire storage cubes that I've purchased either online, or at big box stores like Targét. Even if you go to a business supply store, look for things that can collapse for travel.

PAPER IS HEAVY. I rarely bring more than one print per image in my print binders for all they're worth. More people are going for art books now that digital printing has made professional-looking art books so cheap.

[Toast]

[Kris@WLP]

[Toast]

[bar1scorpio]

Oh, in your general gear box, remember the Holy Trinity. Scissors, Zip Ties,Tape. This will solve all problems, and everyone will need one or the other at some point. Just make sure to get your scissors back.

And back to the meat, I usually now stop specifically for beef jerky. There's lots of places selling that now, in all sorts of flavors.

[Toast]

For those interested in this thread, I found , which is another comprehensive guide on the subject.

[Toast]

One week to go. I acquired a lackey and a booth babe, the latter of whom regretfully flaked out on me, and Toastwife took time out of her busy schedule to help out at the booth as well. I wonder if she'd be willing to try on Booth Babe's Faye Valentine costume. I have a box of supplies (tape, scissors, zip ties, index cards, Sharpies, wire cutters, pliers, power strip), two boxes of cube shelving, fourteen boxes of merchandise, a laptop, a spare battery for the laptop in case there's no power available, a money pouch that straps to me for difficult theft, and a Square reader.

Sources of worry: I don't know *where* in the Bazaar I'm stationed, I don't know how much parking will cost (and I have to pay for three cars' worth . . .), and the banner and art haven't come yet (O anxious I!).

What am I missing? I feel like I'm missing something important.

[Kris@WLP]

[Toast]

Too late for business cards, I'm going to the bank on Monday anyway so will obtain change then, laptop lasts three hours on big battery under stress and two hours on little battery (I do hope they have power), pens are a good idea, they go on the shopping list, table cover==wife's old fitted Pokémon bedsheet, tablecloth also going on List.

Thanks!

[Kris@WLP]

[Toast]

Sleeping the laptop when not using it as a ledger is the plan. I can design a basic business card, I guess . . . Home printer + cardstock it is. Will look unprofessional, but then, that's not exactly inaccurate.

[Toast]

I'm fresh back from AnimeFest 2014 in downtown Dallas, Texas, where I rented a booth for Elder Days Story Time.



Note Ben's suggestion of wire cubes being placed into full effect. Verticality!

I felt weird opening a booth with only one product, so I asked my artist to provide some prints and badge rounds and my wife to unload some of the origami she's been slowly cluttering up the house with over the years, while I like to make wire sculpture, mainly trees. The trees proved most popular. I sold five of them.

Speaking of sale counts, I offloaded nine buttons, twenty-four books, and four prints, two small and two large. That last worries me. I really pushed the prints; I feel bad that they didn't sell. Well, tomorrow is another day.

And tomorrow is another day. I must have given out hundreds of business cards and bookmarks with and my info on them (they came with the art, I was so relieved), and I got invited to set up shop (not for free, alas) at two other conventions. One of these is in a city that I hate and get lost every time I venture therein (Anime North Texas in Fort Worth), and the other one is called .

This one seems to have a decent reputation; I found no reports of hotels catching fire or children vanishing into the night, and their event isn't until next February, which gives me plenty of time to prepare. But. Two buts, actually: Their dealer tables cost half again what this one did for one fewer day of convention, and dealer registration ends in a week and a half.

So should I drop more than half our profits on the hope that a furry convention half a year hence will be closer-aligned to a talking-animals children's book than an anime convention?

[Kris@WLP]

In previous years Texas Furry Fiesta's dealer room has sold out in the first ten MINUTES of sign-ups. This year they're doing three tiers:

(1) Sponsors (vendors who provide some sort of material support to the con) get top priority. (WLP has applied for that.)

(2) Non-sponsors get first-come, first-serve of 3/4 of the tables, less whatever sponsors get. If you get on the waiting list, you only get one table if accepted.

(3) A quarter of the tables are set up for a lottery, to give latecomers hope.

Long story short, it's incredibly difficult to get into TFF, there's no guarantee you can stay in the year following... and yes, you should try anyway.

[Toast]

It is done. I've volunteered my artist to provide some art for a partnership deal, but I'm sure everybody else has too. Here's hoping I get in!