Marble City Comic Con

Complete joke, didnt announce new location, so I went to set up booth at the old location which apparently WAS NEVER BOOKED....celebrities were falsely advertised (straight from celebs Twitter feeds they had no idea about the event. Stay far far away from anything Shannon Rhea promotes or has his dirty hands in....I've never seen such a shit show in my entire life.

This con was just terrible. Our booth fee was exorbitant for the size of venue and the amount of traffic we received. Several of the vendors around us either didn't receive the size booth they were supposed to have, had to share with another vendor, or just gave up and left halfway through Saturday.

We arrived on Friday to load in between the hours of 11-6, like we were told, only to be informed by the hotel staff that we couldn't load in until 8. Arrive back at the hotel that night at 9pm, only to wait in line for another hour and a half to "check in" with the convention staff. That check in was us getting our name written down on a piece of paper and him asking what we had paid for. The guy throwing this had no idea who we were, what we had booked, or even where we were going to go. He eventually took us to our area and told us we could set it up how we liked, and if we wanted more tables to take them from other nearby booths. We thought that was weird, but whatever maybe it was just a hiccup in set up or something and just shrugged it off. The next morning we arrived and finished our set up, at 10am we waited for the normal "flood" of people all coming in at once when the show opened. There was maybe 10-15 total. I'd guess the total attendance all weekend was less than 200.

Even the con attenders I spoke to were disappointed in both the location and the staff. On Sunday the con staff didn't show up until an hour and a half after it opened on Sunday, leading to our best turnout all weekend because they just came in for free (there was an absurd $20 price tag to get into this thing.)

We try to find something positive from each show we do. Well we are positive that we will never book another show ran by these guys. Even if their previous shows did well and were reputable, this one was a complete scam. We made back less than 1/3 of the money we spent to go to this, and we did better than most of the other vendors we spoke to.

TLDR: Vendors avoid, con goers avoid.

First of all, this convention changed Venues just days before the the event. No advertising change of venue. 1 Facebook post doesn’t count. Vendor load in was not thought out And no volunteers, floor plan etc. all the vendors arrived at the time give to load in, but we stood in line for 2 1/2 hours before we could unload anything. By the time he got to us we only had 30 minutes to unload. No set up time. Had to rush around the next morning to do so. We also paid for 4 spaces, and only got 3. One of which was was shared with another vendor. When we asked for the tables we paid for, we were told it would $10 for extra tables.
We finally did get the tables we paid for, but the show runners didn’t really care if any one got what they paid for. Hardly any traffic Saturday. Barely any sales. Sunday, all vendors arrive at least an hour before show time. We were all there, but they was NO con staff to be found. One of the celebrity guest went to the lobby and let con goers in. No con staff to sell tickets, so he said you get in free. I was out side around 12:30, and watched the show runner and his staff pull up. Finally. They all knew all vendors and guests were upset with them. I don’t think they had planned to come back today at all. This “Con” is not worth the time or the money. Stay far away. The only good thing about it was the nice people we met this weekend. Made sone new friends out of it.

The first problem that I noticed right away were the empty tables. Even before the event started there were already a considerable amount of non-occupied tables making the entire layout look barren, which was made worse by the fact that some tables were oddly placed outside the usual artist alley "islands." According to the official Facebook page there were a number of guests who pulled out well in advance of the event so it's a bit strange that they couldn't have reorganized the layout so it didn't look so disconnected. I didn't have much interaction with the staff but they seemed nice enough, it's just a shame that the overall planning was so subpar making everything else seem so disorganized.

By far the worst part of the event however were the attendees themselves, or lack thereof. Simply put this event was a huge let down. I've been to events a fraction of the size that had more attendees. There's no other way of putting it, people just didn't come to this event. Maybe it was the high ticket prices or poor location. I found myself spending more time drawing in my sketchbook then actually interacting with any people. Even when people did stop by, they simply didn't buy anything. Something that was shared by every artist that I asked (originally I thought it was just my table that wasn't selling anything). Saturday was definitely more lively due to the cosplay contest but for a two day event that boasted being one of the biggest in Tennessee it still didn't feel like it. Furthermore Sunday was just plain dead, with many artists and vendors packing up hours before the official end time due to poor sales.

While the affordability and the staff (the few I actually interacted with) were definitely the highlights, it still wasn't enough to offset the obvious disappointments. Either this was a bad year or the event organizers need to seriously reevaluate how this show is run in the future. As for me I will definitely not be coming back.

The staff were nonexistent, there was only one man at the front of the room but no one walking around or available when we needed them (at one point a guest dropped a glass bottle and it shattered in front of our table). Layout was... okay. Pretty usual for an artist's alley. Attendance was VERY low and by the end of the first day there were way too many empty artist's tables and vendor booths where vendors were deciding it wasn't worth it, packing up and going home early. The venue itself was a bit run down and outside of the city center. The convention itself was scheduled for the same weekend as Rhythm and Blooms which is a HUGE festival every year which is where most of the guests probably were. Poor planning all around.