First time boothing at EECC - my experience and conclusions
Not gonna lie, I had intense impostor’s syndrome up until the event itself. 🫠
I applied to the Artists Alley with a naive ‘what’s the worst thing that could happen’ mindset, but the worst thing in my mind was definitely actually being accepted. And so I was accepted. And the turmoil began. I constantly asked myself who tf do i think I am, going to EECC while I prepared prints, zines and merch. But I kept going and tried not to overthink it.
Preparations
The good part of not having a printer at home is that I had to stop drawing new pieces for the event in advance, to have time to order merch and fix any misprints that may happen, and so stopping me from doing everything last minute.
The bad part was that I had to finish everything in advance 😭 I couldn’t do anything spontaneous or merch for series I was just getting into (hello Ichi the Witch!!).
I planned on having mainly original content (the first worldbuilding zine, the second worldbuilding zine and a small art zine, A4 and mini prints, stickers) and a small amount of fanart of things I was really into at the time (Vocaloid, Witch Hat Atelier, Houseki no Kuni, Love Bullet, Touhou).
Based on my experience on my first (small, 2 half-day) event in March where I sold 13 zines… I decided to outsource the zines production for EECC because I wouldn’t be able to handle building the ~30 pieces of each of the zines I estimated I would need. Putting them together the first time was fun but the combined pressure of freelancing, day job, upcoming gallery show and real life didn’t allow me enough energy and time to do it… But they turned out great!! Bigger than the first handmade one (they’re actually A5 now), the paper’s white is more natural and the blacks a bit softer. The printed pages are now 180gr vs the original 80gr so it’s a bit thicker too.
The other two looked very professional as well, I was so happy to get them in time!!
Logistics
The problem was pretty straight forward: the con was in Bucharest and I was not. How to send the stuff over to Bucharest?
I just used a good ol’ troller to carry some merch with me via train and sent the rest through a courier to be picked up my me the next day when I arrived in the city.
From the event itself, communication was pretty bad: they missed their own deadlines (announcing who passed the quality check), delayed announcing artists and the map, AND the map didn’t show booths at all in the Artist Alley. This made marketing on the artists’ end difficult since we didn’t have a booth number to tell our fans! I ended up just vaguely announcing I’ll be at EECC while listing my catalogue. Same thing with the stamp rally I was in: we couldn’t list the booth numbers for the buyers to visit for the stamps until last minute.
branding
I never gave much attention to personal branding before this event.
My business card is just a comic panel I liked featuring Someș and a QR to my website. It’s a nice business card and it does its job, but it’s definitely a mark of how shy I am about promoting myself.
As I didn’t have a pricelist yet because I had no idea what con prices were in general, I opted to have some small branded cards on which I could write prices on the spot.
This time I wanted to think a bit about presentation and not just dump my stuff on a table and call it a day 💀 being part of a stamp rally made broadcasting my name even more important.
Any signage I had still needed to be transportable and easy to install, so I kept it simple and square. Some simple self adhesive sticker stock on A3 mousse boards would be light enough to carry around.
booth
For the stickers I tried building a holder with pockets out of felt and some transparent plastic sheets.
I could have gotten one of those little plastic shelves meant for nail polish but I needed something flat, light and flexible enough as to not break on the way there. I used some clamps to fix it to the modular structure and it looked really cute!!
For the prints, I used magnets on the back of them to hang them from the metal frame of the structure. The miniprints had to sit awkwardly on the table or in an upright holder because I couldn’t figure out where to place them 💀
Once the stand was up, I think it looked nice for a first timer!
The Alley itself was badly lit, with the only natural light coming from the back and covering the merch in shadows. AND it was windy. Basically an outdoor area just walled off with mesh. I might skip future editions held here because holy shit.
I added a tray for freebies (business cards, some gallery stickers and cards, plus comic logo and the meep sticker) and another tray to hype up the game I’m working on. It really did help with keeping people at the table for a while.
The back was fully utilitarian, hah! I managed to have a space for most mini prints and sticker sheets, and some space for zines + misc scissors and glue, snacks, drinks and external battery.
Keeping track of sales was done both on a piece of paper, AND on a convoluted excel file I created the night before… No surprise, it was slow but at least I have some data to estimate future merch.
sales
For someone with no clout and mostly original content, I think I did pretty well!
My best sellers were my zines (31 of volume 1 sold, 26 of volume 2 sold!?), my houses and magical fauna/flora sticker sheets (I assume, neutral and cheap enough to appeal to lots of people) and well, obviously, the Miku sticker sheets. I actually sold out on those.
I managed to make my money back on the production costs, and since I overestimated the needed amount A LOT, I have tons of merch left over for future cons. Yay!
what next?
As nice as I thought it was, I can surely find things to improve with the set up!
Like, more coherent signage, a visible pricelist, a better excel file, and so on.
Other logistical things: figure out food and caffeine better, get a POS, get a helper, get a better merch storage solution.
I very much fumbled the stickersheet area, I have no clue how to organize it at that moment.
Some way for people to see me draw.
As convenient as the felt pockets were, the stickers weren’t at eye level and Valerian kept falling!!
Even if people were interested in the comic with only the worldbuilding on the table, it just felt awkward. I should have had some kind of pages sampler or the comic itself as well.
conclusions
Even if nobody knew about my comic, a lot of people were interested and picked up the zines and I’m grateful for it!
My theory is that seeing all that self indulgent merch made people stop and wonder what’s with that, some stopped to ask me what anime/ game they’re from. Basically the unspoken part was: because I want to find out more/ watch it too/ play it too. When I told them it’s all original content and you can read it HEREEEE they were more inclined to look into it since they were already interested enough to ask about the source.
It was a nice experience even if it was A LOT to handle! I loved talking to people about my comic and them coming back to tell me how much they liked reading it or the zines 💞