That's not to say there were no attendees at all though. They just weren't there to shop! No event I've ever tabled at before or since AwesomeCon has had as many people browse and not buy. Despite the fairly decent foot traffic, it was just so depressing and disappointing the entire weekend. AwesomeCon also had the DEADEST dead hours ever. Literally just disassociated and stared across the aisle all afternoon.
Apparently, the reputation now is that AwesomeCon is more about its guests and autographs. AwesomeCon seems to be more "western" media focused than the nearby KatsuCon and MagFest, so maybe that's something to consider. I personally did fine enough by the end of the weekend, but for the people around me, it was a wash of a weekend. I have't returned since and have no plans to -- even though I'd happily fly to DC's other artist alley events.
My last note is that the layout was really weird. The merchants and artist alley was in the same hall, which was fine, but the artist alley was perpendicular to the main walkway/entrance. So basically, the attendees saw the sides of the artist tables first and continued to walk past them. I really believe that just rotating the artist alley to have booths face the main walkway would have helped a lot.
If you're looking to travel and have fun, while making SOME costs back, I would recommend it. I would also recommend it if you're local, since you can possibly make enough if you focus on mainstream media. Most people that attend are older folk, so they will buy fine art paintings or art from old series/american shows. The younger crowd will only buy mainstream stuff like Genshin atm (those were my better selling items). No one even realized it was their 20th anniversary because it wasn't advertised well and they didn't do anything big for it imo. For my first time coming here, it was a fun event but I won't be returning.
Load in was easy, but only if you knew where to load into. How do you find that out? Not by the exhibitor packet! I had to look up past events at the convention center and look at THEIR exhibitor packets to find out where the loading dock was (It's on M street between 7th and 9th btw). However load out was an **absolute cluster-f**. When going to get the dock permit, the staff member was on the phone and I had to wave the form in his face so he would sign it. There was a communication issue between con staff and convention center staff on how load out would work and the con.center staff were abysmal to deal with. Extremely rude.
We are super new, so I can't say if what we made was a lot or not. But we attended a 2 day con the weekend before and did $1,200 better here. There were a TON of empty tables, to the point where artists started to spread out their displays so it didn't look so barren. While the wide aisles were nice, it caused the layout to be way too big and we saw many attendees leave before getting anywhere near the back of the con.
Overall, even as a local, I don't see myself coming back. The price point and profit just isn't there.
Venue - The venue is okay. I didn't particularly like it when they moved Otakon to this venue, and I still am not very impressed. They have built up the area around the convention center more since the last time I went, so that is a plus, but the venue is absolutely massive. This con is way too small for a convention center of this size, and lugging everything down the longest hallway ever to "hand-carry" my inventory was awful. But what would have been more awful was attempting to even find the load-in, considering the layout of the streets in downtown DC. We didn't even test that out.
Staff- I gave the staff a five star rating because I rarely dealt with them, but the few times I did, they were super friendly. No complaints here on that one.
Layout- This alley is massive. It's way too big, and it is lumped in with the exhibitors hall as well, meaning when guests come in to look at everything, they are probably walking for a good hour and a half before they see "everything." And even then, I guarantee they missed something. Or a lot of things. Also, there were so many artists in the alley, and they still smooshed the tables as close together as possible, which was a bit tricky for load-in and set-up if someone was blocking one of two entrances to behind the tables. Felt kind of like a fire hazard.
Attendance - This show was well-attended, but that did not correlate to sales. At any given time we had people in our aisle, but they often were just walking and hardly looking at the items for sale. It was incredibly strange.
Affordability- The price for this table was astronomically high. It's $350 for the table, and I had to purchase a $95 extra ticket for my second helper. Even then, they would not provide a third chair, and we had to bring our own. The hotels around the area were on the high side, but that is to be expected during a con. Still, with little sales, that means I lost out on money. Food is incredibly expensive as well, and the autograph/photo-ops with the guests were ridiculous. I saw one photo-op cost $350, and an autograph cost another $300 for the same people. These high prices meant that guests weren't able to purchase things from ANY vendors, let alone the artists alley. I made most of my money on only small items because of this.
Overall- I have never been more bored sitting at a con table. I lost money, and was so bored I packed up a half hour before we were supposed to and left. I would not recommend this con to anyone unless you live right next door, and even then, I still would have only made $50.
The convention wants to be NYCC and charges NYCC prices, but in the end, they're just a little guy trying to play in the big pond.
Sales were dismal, I sell fanart prints and while I'm not a big artist I usually do better. I talked to some of the industry artists who were also around and we all agreed it was incredibly mediocre and absolutely sucked. If you're local it might be worth going to, but you will have a very boring weekend. I was able to have my laptop and tablet out to draw on my table because there was nothing happening the weekend.
Staff was very nice the few interactions I had, and set up was easy. Layout seems O K for attendees, but bad for sales. Hall is so large most people are tired of walking through about halfway or even sooner so they don't really get through everything. Attendees not looking to buy from artist mostly looking for free swag exhibitor booths/official merch like shirts, figures, etc. Or they're spending all on photo ops/autographs.
However its a HUGE show and it can be overwhelming for lots of guests. Lots of very big names from very big media were there and I'm sure that factored into guests wanting to spend less and use that money to meet their favorite actors. I attended in 2017 and came back and did the same setup in 2018 and it really illuminated some differences in guest spending. It was slow in 2018, which I hadn't experienced previously. The year before I almost sold out of my most popular items, but this year I feel like people really pulled back. I think the con moved the entrance to the show floor to a different end of the hall, and because it was closer to the vendors and not the artist alley, it seemed like it took a long time for guest to funnel to the other side where we were. Friday has been slow but things pick up by Sat-Sun, and I notice quite a lot of other artist alley vendors come to buy each other's stuff. There are a LOT of us, so it could be that there is a bit of saturation in the market there.
I will say that I think original art/work does pretty well at this con, and people are really interested in non-fandom things just as much as their favorite fandoms.
Overall I didn't need to deal with staff all that much so I can't speak for that but it wasn't very difficult to get in and set up or take down. The hours are not too bad, about 10am-5pm for most days. I've done 12 hour days at other conventions, so that's nice to have a "regular work day" schedule. Getting to the con and parking can be frustrating if you aren't familiar with Washington D.C. traffic and parking but its a giant convention in a big city so there are parking decks and hotels near by.
In the end i made less than the year before, but I did still make a profit. Attendees are nice and enthusiastic and the con works to make it an accessible venue for all. Since its a con that covers all kinds of media (books, comics, tv, movies, video games, etc.) its easy to sell, since there's something for everyone there.
However its a HUGE show and it can be overwhelming for lots of guests. Lots of very big names from very big media were there and I'm sure that factored into guests wanting to spend less and use that money to meet their favorite actors. I attended in 2017 and came back and did the same setup in 2018 and it really illuminated some differences in guest spending. It was slow in 2018, which I hadn't experienced previously. The year before I almost sold out of my most popular items, but this year I feel like people really pulled back. I think the con moved the entrance to the show floor to a different end of the hall, and because it was closer to the vendors and not the artist alley, it seemed like it took a long time for guest to funnel to the other side where we were. Friday has been slow but things pick up by Sat-Sun, and I notice quite a lot of other artist alley vendors come to buy each other's stuff. There are a LOT of us, so it could be that there is a bit of saturation in the market there.
I will say that I think original art/work does pretty well at this con, and people are really interested in non-fandom things just as much as their favorite fandoms.
Overall I didn't need to deal with staff all that much so I can't speak for that but it wasn't very difficult to get in and set up or take down. The hours are not too bad, about 10am-5pm for most days. I've done 12 hour days at other conventions, so that's nice to have a "regular work day" schedule. Getting to the con and parking can be frustrating if you aren't familiar with Washington D.C. traffic and parking but its a giant convention in a big city so there are parking decks and hotels near by.
In the end i made less than the year before, but I did still make a profit. Attendees are nice and enthusiastic and the con works to make it an accessible venue for all. Since its a con that covers all kinds of media (books, comics, tv, movies, video games, etc.) its easy to sell, since there's something for everyone there.
However its a HUGE show and it can be overwhelming for lots of guests. Lots of very big names from very big media were there and I'm sure that factored into guests wanting to spend less and use that money to meet their favorite actors. I attended in 2017 and came back and did the same setup in 2018 and it really illuminated some differences in guest spending. It was slow in 2018, which I hadn't experienced previously. The year before I almost sold out of my most popular items, but this year I feel like people really pulled back. I think the con moved the entrance to the show floor to a different end of the hall, and because it was closer to the vendors and not the artist alley, it seemed like it took a long time for guest to funnel to the other side where we were. Friday has been slow but things pick up by Sat-Sun, and I notice quite a lot of other artist alley vendors come to buy each other's stuff. There are a LOT of us, so it could be that there is a bit of saturation in the market there.
I will say that I think original art/work does pretty well at this con, and people are really interested in non-fandom things just as much as their favorite fandoms.
Overall I didn't need to deal with staff all that much so I can't speak for that but it wasn't very difficult to get in and set up or take down. The hours are not too bad, about 10am-5pm for most days. I've done 12 hour days at other conventions, so that's nice to have a "regular work day" schedule. Getting to the con and parking can be frustrating if you aren't familiar with Washington D.C. traffic and parking but its a giant convention in a big city so there are parking decks and hotels near by.
In the end i made less than the year before, but I did still make a profit. Attendees are nice and enthusiastic and the con works to make it an accessible venue for all. Since its a con that covers all kinds of media (books, comics, tv, movies, video games, etc.) its easy to sell, since there's something for everyone there.
I skipped 2016 at Awesomecon since they raised table rates $50 for two years in a row, and with middling profit for a 3 day con last year I decided it would be cutting profits too close to invest.
I went in 2014 and had a nice enough time, though it was slow so I want again the next year hoping to do a little better. They hugely expanded the number of AA tables in 2015 and almost everyone I asked said they had trouble making any profit at all. The customers were just spread too thin, too many tables without enough money coming through. It also hurt that people had to go through the exhibitor area before hitting AA, so some had light wallets by the time they made it to my table. Many customers were just passing through to get to autographs anyways.
Getting cell reception to accept card payments was a consistent problem, but not too uncommon in conventions in general. The walk to even get to the hall was ridiculous, and half the time we didn't even know where we were going and just had to get lucky asking other AA members where to go. Badges were hard to find, and even when we did it was only after a lengthy and out of the way walk to the loading docks (which we hadn't entered through).
I'd consider going again in the future, but maybe when attendance is much higher. As it is, the table cost is high and for other conventions of similar table price I can make two or three times as much. Would not recommend to a newbie unless you're okay losing money in exchange for exposure.
Large chunks of the show seemed over-controlling. Hand trucks were banned outside of very specific load-in times. There was a sixty-four page manual, though most of it was full of forms for hiring the unions contracted to the hall. We got the manual and table layout only three weeks before the show, both of which would have been enough to give me pause if I hadn't paid for the table nearly a year before.
I turned a profit, but it was a lot of effort, and with a $300 table, a semi-questionable investment. I may do it again next year, but I worry it will have continued to grow while not providing growing profit.
I flew there from out of state and I only wanted to get over with the set up to have a chance to check the city out. However I had to wait 1&1/2hs to set up.
Then had to find the organizers to get my badge, I hadn't seen it during my wait time or set up time. They were in the loading deck, which I didn't use. I've almost missed them and apparently it was my fault (?). Other friends had the same issue.
Sales were terrible. There were way too many artists/vendors and that the public completely ignored the tables to run to the autographs.
Oh, and they were also blocking the phone internet signal so people had to pay for overpriced wifi. I thought it was weird during the con (I had phone signal but not internet), but I've found out about it on an article months after that (I've been looking for it but I can't find it, it would be cool if somebody can share it).
Another annoying thing is that they spam you like no other con to try to get you to pay for extra services. It's ridiculous.
Only highlight, there was a nice volunteer that checked up on us and cover me for a bit to take a bathroom break.
I've talked to a staff representative who came by my table at another convention to try to sell me a table for 2016. Told him the issues and he said "I've heard some people didn't do so well, maybe next year we will make the hallways narrower so people will have to pay attention to tables". The guy was super nice, but his solution... is not really a solution. Hard pass on doing this one again unless I heard *great* things about the next few editions.
Pros: Large Show, Friendly Staff
Cons: Confusing layout, Too many vendors for the number of attendees, Parking nightmare
Overall the convention wasn't too bad. It seemed that the staff had done a great job in expanding the convention and the number of vendors, but vendor growth outpaced attendee growth significantly.
The vendorexhibitor area was a maze of islands and attendees regularly admitted to getting lost. The artist alley area seemed cramped, though I was in the vendor section. The vendor area also included a number of corporate vendors, i.e. Sprint, etc. and distracted attendees from the creative vendors.
Parking helped you to get your exercise for the day; there is no parking area associated with the convention center and as such I found myself walking multiple blocks each day to and from the convention.
