Weekly Drop 22 July - 28 July

[TheGeekyTwin]

Hi everyone!!

How is everyone starting off their new week? Well I hope. :) Me? I just finished watching supernatural and now my fiancé and I are trying to come up with something else to watch. We don't have cable and we are really mostly on Netflicks at the moment. (which is why we could only watch through season 8 of supernatural.....) And then there's the fact that Naruto only comes out once a week its getting hard to find something really interesting to watch series wise.

Also im almost done with the anime im currently watching at the moment.... Black Butler, pretty good by the way. Im thinking about cosplaying as Ciel (honestly I love his coat with his top hat and blue bow.), now if I can only come up with some one who wants to cosplay as Sebastian......

So Whats everyone else up too? Busy for the holiday season yet?

[Former_Member]

Another manic Monday for me. Working on orders and drawing an outline for a new shop I'd like to open.

I'm not looking at any new stuff either. I've got my regs.... Naruto, Toriko, and Fairy Tail. Mostly I've been watching real life stuff like True Blood and Midsomer Murders (BBC)

My holiday season usually starts in August with the back to school crowd. Hope that's the case this year because this month has been a real sticker so far. :-(

[TheGeekyTwin]

Cool a new shop! what is it? what is it?

[Former_Member]

I haven't opened it yet, but it's going to be home decor stuff. That's what I used to do before the clothes on Ebay. Leather pillow covers and such. I need a clever name too. :-)

[ningenheadwear]

I'm just popping in to say I'll be back tomorrow. I am so sleepyyyyy....zzzzzzzz....

[Former_Member]

Drive-by!!!!!!

[ningenheadwear]

Whew! Made it here finally!

I've been having a weird business month this month. While I have fewer commitments to attend to, I have far less time to get anything done and I don't know why. My sales of ready made hats are slower than is typical of this time of year but I am getting a lot of custom orders. Odd.

I did come to the very in my face realization that I need to get my rear in gear & make some money. We just booked a family vacation to Hawaii for next April, we're pricing out hotels for our California family vacation in November and soon I'll be booking another short family vacation to Seattle for March. Then there's another trip in April, this time to Calgary but maybe not quite all of us. And before you get too jealous about all our vacations, the trip to Hawaii is for a cheer competition and the other 3 are for Comic Cons I'll be vending at. We just always tack on a few extra days for fun time. Plus we always have a blast at the cons.

I seem to be on an anime break right now. Hubby & I watch a Supernatural episode every couple of days and the only other stuff I have time to "watch" is whatever I turn start on Netflix to lull me to sleep. I don't last long before I pass out.

[Former_Member]

Well yeah, I was getting a bit jealous, Ning.

I'm curious. Those cons must really work for you to be able to afford all those trips. How long before our Ning has to outsource and go really big time? The drive!?! How do you handle the drive with the kids? Do you fly to any of them? Where's the furthest you've down here in the states? Have you come to the great state of Texas yet?

[TheGeekyTwin]

What are the names of the Cons your going to? and where are they located? My fience and I want to attend more but i wanted to get some more information about them from people who go.

[ningenheadwear]

Okay, I spent the last day thinking about your questions because they got me curious too.

We do drive to all of our conventions. Flying+shipping inventory is just not cost effective for us. After doing 2-24 hour trips (each way!) to Disneyland with 3 kids under the age of 8 in our minivan (which I hated since day 1), hubby decided I needed a much better, more comfortable, more pimped out vehicle to be driving to shows so we splurged and got us an absolutely massive SUV with all the options. It fits all of us comfortably & has a dvd player (yay!). It also helps a lot that our kids are not normal and behave extremely well during all of these drives. Although, I will admit there does average 1 freak out every 6 hours or so because my oldest at times must be a bratty princess. They all start with her & may involve up to 4 of us but they only last, literally, 2-3 minutes & are then followed by a guaranteed couple hours of quiet.

The kids also have learned to behave very well at all of the cons we got to. If they are not helping me out, they are fairly free to walk around provided they check in lots or they have started helping other people at their tables/booths. Since this is our 3rd year of doing cons, we know a lot of the other artists & a number of the other vendors that go to each of the show. It's like there's a convention circuit so you see the same people a lot. And a lot of the other people also have kids & bring them along if the kids don't hinder them. I have one friend who only brings her now 12 year old twins to a con if she absolutely can't find a babysitter because they are miserable the whole time. My kids totally love it & the first thing they always do is go through the con program to find what they want to do. Next thing they do is go in search of their friends that we only see at cons. But I will say, I'd never bring small kids or a baby to a con I was vending at-my son was 4 at our 1st one & that was a bit of a challenge. Now that he's 7, it's smooth sailing.

So far, we've done cons in Vancouver, Calgary & Edmonton in Canada. In the US, we did Seattle to test out selling in the States (it was a huge success!) so now we've decided to do LA in the fall. For right now, we're strictly sticking West Coast & Alberta because it's all I can handle between selling online & the kids. There is only so much school I can pull them out of & they're far too young to be left alone. The fact that my husband works nights & can only take so much time off work also limits how often I can go away. We are looking at eventually going to Colorado, Las Vegas & Arizona as well. Probably Oregon next year, too. Texas is way too far to drive to, but I'd love to go there one day. Hail Mary cons I may try to get into one day are New York Comic Con because I've never been to NYC and San Diego Comic Con, because well, it's THE Comic Con to go to.

I'm still a ways away from outsourcing and quite probably never will because I'm such a control freak over my stuff. But I do have employees, or as some people like to call them, kids. At cons I sell stuff besides just my fleece hats. I sell cosplay ears, embroidered headbands & perler bead stuff. I make all the cosplay ears myself but the kids do a lot of the other stuff. My girls do most of the embroidery. I take care of the set up & change all the threads, but they sit there & monitor it all which is the time consuming part. And all 3 do the perler beading which is an activity they really enjoy. I do the designing & ironing but they do all the beading. I figure by the time they are ready for college, they each will have earned their entire tuition plus some by working for me. Added bonus, they are all developing excellent work ethics.


Holy wow, I sure have rambled on! Don't even know if I answered your questions because I forgot where this whole post started. But I do have to head out to pick up the kids from school so I'll be back later to bore you some more. >.<

[ningenheadwear]

Holy wall of text, Batman! Oops!

[Former_Member]

More! More! More!!!!!!!

[TheGeekyTwin]

Yes i must know more as well!!!!!
Also i want to learn how to do the perlear beads. My sister and i are trying to find things we can do together and we think that would be a great start. Do you know of any packs or any tip that can help me start?
Also more info on the cons!!! love hearing about them. :)

[ningenheadwear]

I'll get into the cons tomorrow but here are my perler tips:

-use real Perler Beads. They melt & look the best. Fuze beads are just not the same & the other knockoffs are even worse. And NEVER ever mix 2 different types of beads, they all have different melting points. My kids learned this the hard way after a friend gave us all of her kids' leftover beads that were all mixed in an ice cream bucket. We ended up tossing the whole bucket into recycling.

-look on Pinterest or Google images for ideas. My kids do this & then tweak them to look how they want. Anything pixelated can be used for a design too. And cross stitch patterns.

-don't iron with a heavy hand. Lightly iron & keep the iron moving constantly. I usually do 20-25 seconds per side.

-after ironing, weight them down under something heavy to keep them flat. Otherwise they tend to bow a bit.

-if you're just starting out. I would buy a tray of beads like this: http://www.eksuccessbrands.com/perlerbeads/Products/Tray_of_Beads_with_Idea_Book_17605.htm You get a good variety of colors & a few thousand beads. I think you have to buy the peg boards separately though. I buy the 1000 packs because I only want certain colors. If you buy the big bucket of beads plan on spending HOURS & HOURS sorting through them. My time & sanity is well worth the extra $$$ for the already sorted beads.

-Joanns & Michaels are the best places to find perler beads. Plus they generally have coupons.

-use tweezers to put the beads on the pegboards. The pointy surgical tweezers are even better-you can do 2 beads at once with practice. Only my 7 year old can easily perler using just his fingers & that's because his fingers so small. My regular sized adult fingers just can't do it easily.

[TheGeekyTwin]

thanks so much!!!!
Im totally going to try this with my sister now. :)

[ningenheadwear]

This year I've done:
-Emerald City Comic Con (Seattle)
-Vancouver Fan Expo
-Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo

I'll be doing these in the fall:
-Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo
-Stan Lee's Comikaze (Los Angeles)

There are more I'd like to do but I do have some time, family & money constraints. How I pick my shows is through a very simple formula: if there's fewer than 35,000 attendees, my total costs must be below $500. 35,000-100,000 attendees, my total costs must be around $1000. Less than 15,000 or more than 100,000 attendees, I'm not interested. Here's an article that shows the biggest comic cons in North America: http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2013/06/19/what-are-the-biggest-comic-cons-in-north-am... 3 of the cons I go to are on it (Emerald/Calgary/Vancouver). Edmonton had its 1st year last year. It was put together in less than 4 months & had 14,000 people attend (not me though, I was in Disneyland). This year they're expecting double that. Stan Lee considers itself to be a pop culture & multimedia con so it's not on the list but last year had over 50,000 attendees.

Total costs would include: my table in Artist Alley (anywhere from $125-$250 this year), transportation costs (gas+parking), hotel & food. I only include my costs. If I'm bringing my entire entourage, their added costs aren't included in my initial calculations.

At each show, I make anywhere from 2-5 times my total costs. That's in the short term. Then there is also the added exposure I get from being listed on the con's website (I get a lot of hits from them). This has led to sales before the con even starts & pre-orders that people will pick up at the con. Then there are all the sales I get after the con: people ordering custom colors I didn't have at the show, hats I didn't bring but have online & custom orders and people buying hats months after the con because they decided they needed one. Just this week I got a custom order from someone who said they saw me at the Calgary show. That was 3 months ago. This is where business cards are my best friend!

And I know this happens even though not everyone tells me they saw me at a show. My direct traffic is now higher than ever before and especially rises for a couple weeks after each show, more hits from the cons' websites and the fact that suddenly I am shipping way more hats than usual to the area I just recently did a show in.

Small cons (<15,000) are not cost effective for me. And big ones (100,000+) are gong shows where people wait in line for HOURS for everything. They're not generally interested in buying stuff from people that already established. They want official merch for the most part. I may one year when my kids are older to San Diego Comic Con but I would totally expect not to sell enough to cover all my expenses because SDCC & everything around it is shockingly expensive & crowded. I would do it mostly so that we would have a home base to sit for a few while the con is going on. If I made a couple bucks to help pay for the trip, great! But if I didn't, I wouldn't mind either.

A BIG reason cons work for me is because I love them so much. It's the only time I get to see people face to face and see how they love the stuff they buy from me. Rotten apples are few & far between and everyone else makes up for them. I have people who purposefully seek me out each year & are happy to see me-it's a great ego boost and helps me get through the tedious times I'm sitting at home struggling over something that isn't turning out the way I want & wondering why the hell I'm doing this. I have also made some great friendships with other artists that do these shows. We all live in different cities, nowhere close to each other, so meeting up at these shows is a great family reunion. These are the people who understand how & why I do what I do because they are exactly like me or are in a relationship with someone like me. They don't question and/or judge what I do & why I do it and it is such a refreshing change.

Okay. There's another small novel. I don't know if I've addressed your curiosity yet but I have to go to my daughter's school to watch her in a play. I'll return & let you know why I'm doing a show this year where I won't cover my expenses but still consider it a good idea.

[Former_Member]

Ning, you make the cons sound so exciting. Every now and then they have one here in Houston, but I've never been to one. My product isn't the type. I had tried a couple of very small shows back when I first started and they were dismal failures. So no more traveling all over Texas to those things for me. :-)


Oh and thank you so much for telling us all this. It's very interesting and I've been reading every word. Makes me want to go to one to see for myself!!!!

[TheGeekyTwin]

This is great information, I was always intersted in what people do at the cons when they were selling and how they set up. Very intersting about the cost and the attendees for each con. I would never have thought of that...
How do you prepare for the cons? do you have a set number of products you make depending on what con you go to?
Also do you have custom order sheets for those who want a custom hat? i tried to do a show once and i just failed at the custom order part of it.....

[TheGeekyTwin]

Also i must say reading what you do and how you do it, is very inspiring for me. I would love to go to Cons and sell. Im always trying to create a product that would go well at cons. My fiance and i love going to Cons and "living the con life" as well call it is a dream of ours. Hard work yes, but we loved every minute when we go to them.

[ningenheadwear]

I make cons sound exciting because I love them sooooooo much. And my husband & kids love them as much as me. We always try really hard to make the most out of the experience & we are always rewarded for it.

But bad cons happen. I had a great time (financially, my 2nd best con ever, personally, my best & fave con ever) at Emerald City this year, while another etsy seller definitely did not. He was situated in a bad spot (totally out of his control) but made the situation worse by getting in an ever increasing depressing mood as time went on. He just gave off this vibe & people stayed away. Sometimes people just have a product nobody is interested in no matter how hard they try to sell it. And some people are just there to make money and really don't like being there.

My first con was a total bust-made maybe $800 but spent around $1500 to do it. Granted, $300-$400 of it was buying stuff for displays & advertising, most of which I still use today. But we tacked on a few extra days & had an awesome mini-family vacation afterwards. I networked & met some people who I'm great friends with today and I chalked the whole thing up as a learning experience. I learned that anime cons may be directly aimed at my target market, my target market doesn't always have money to buy stuff. And people don't always want to buy warm fleece hats at the beginning of summer. And that is the only con I ever walked away from in the red.

Which brings me to the show I'm doing this year where I will probably once again not sell enough to cover my expenses...Stan Lee's Comikaze.

First reason I booked it was because I like to take a vacation between my Halloween rush and Christmas chaos season. But because we're going to a cheer competition in Hawaii in the spring, we couldn't really afford to pay for 2 big vacations within 6 months of each other (plus the kids are expecting Disneyland again for Halloween 2014 because it's a tradition we go every other year). So this way, I can make some money to offset the costs of the trip. Plus I can claim gas, hotels on the way there & back and a few days of the hotel while we're down there as business expenses. But the real reason we're going is so that I can try to get consignments (or even better, wholesale!) to vendors who do cons along the southern US and/or have shops in the southwest. I don't know how well that plan is going to work out but I won't know until I try!

I am very honored, Jessie, that you find my tales of the cons to be inspiring. I love being able to talk about them & not have people think I'm totally weird.

Sharon, I believe Comicpalooza is in your backyard. I know people who've gone to that one & had a great time. Better yet, go to one I'll be at!

I have to head out & probably will be gone for the rest of the weekend but I'll be back next week to ramble on some more...