Cleveland Wizard Con Recap Added - Almost no pictures, sorry.

[1Cool]

Not having time to read the whole thread, but you also need to remember that

the members here only representative of about 25 % of the buyers at a convention.

Maybe not that high. The vast amount of comic collectors I personally know

do not give three hoots about slabs, but do like to collect pretty books from dealers

that are kind , considerate, and are not condescending. I love watching Mr Evans

sell a $ 5 book to a con buyer. There are one or two others that just enjoy selling.

And quite a few that can't be bothered to sell a cheap book. Why did they bring

them then ? I have always thought that the dealer is vastly more important than

the inventory. If you have the " self service " mentality, you may miss the good

stuff under the table. Dealers and buyers making conversation is a good thing.

Fan boys wanting Deadpool all the time, takes a little more smiling and a slow

positive response to break the ice. If you're not tripping over your own mess, then

you have a good booth.

 

Great stuff last night. I've been told I have good customer service skills at the few Cons I've set up at and genuinely love comics so it hopefully shows when buying from me. I've definitely seen the dealers who look pissed all the time and can't bother to get off a chair to show up books and I definitely don't want to fall into the category.

 

Grea

[1Cool]

RE: the layout.

 

I assume that the convention organizer requires you to be within your 10' x 10' space?

If so you have not left space to account for the thickness of your wall display. Base measurements need to be included, and it will push any tables in front of it away.

 

just fyi

 

Not to sure what type of wall you are using.

 

I'm hoping they do not bring out the measuring tape after I'm all set up. The wall units (which I'll have attached to the booth frame and tables so they are straight up) will only be behind the smaller "inside" tables so it shouldn't be a problem pushing everything in by half a foot.

[1Cool]

Keep in mind that the bottom row of your wall rack may be blocked by short or mag boxes sitting on your tables positioned in front of your wall. This is assuming your wall is elevated on legs or stilts.

 

Yep - with this layout the bottom two rows of my walls will be blocked by the table and short boxes. I'm hoping having two L shaped walls will allow me to show off a large assortment of high end books to help me bring people to the inside portion of the booth. I may have to limit the number of people on the inside at one time but I'll play it by ear once I see how the crowd reacts. I can always rearrange the booth on Friday night/Saturday morning with all the helpers I have if I run into any snags on Friday.

[1Cool]

I will say YES in all cases regarding the expense for a corner booth, as you will have 20 feet along an aisle instead of ten.

 

Regarding the layout, I've done a lot of setup within a 10 x 10 area. You do want to get your tables along the perimeter. You don't need a 4' x 4' entrance to your booth. My recommendation is to put the 8' plus 2' table along one edge. Usually these are 2 1/2' wide, leaving you with 7 1/2' for your other perpendicular side. You can set up a 6' long table (maybe pull it out about 2" from the far edge to allow for comic books to straddle the end of the table a bit so you can get 9 boxes on it). That will leave you with about 15" to 18" of width for your entrance into your back section. With the 10 feet of table, you can get 14-15 boxes on top, so your total on top is 23-24 boxes. I've been guilty of loading up the floor with boxes- I'll recommend spacing them so a buyer has room for his feet under your table (between the floor boxes)- maybe 10 floor boxes on one side and 7 on the other. I've used backboards of 4' sections, with a center section to cover the corner (which is real tricky: try to spend time designing this in your basement as one deals with double fault lines, etc)

 

The few times, I've tried to design my space to allow people to go behind, I've found then very few buyers will actually go within your space

 

Have fun

 

Thanks for the info. I'm really worried about only leaving 18" for an opening to the inside portion of the booth. Cleveland is definitely not home to small framed people and I would think most of us big guys would not be able to squeeze thru that opening even turned sideways. I'd hate for people to bump into boxes and the neighbors booth every time they came inside to look at books. 4' may be a bit big but that way two people can come and go pretty much at the same time if need be. But I'll keep it in mind.

 

[1Cool]

Anyone ever experimented on using elevated carts underneath the boxes on the floor to help people look at those books. I'm envisioning attaching the carts with bungee cords to prevent them from going too far into the aisle and maybe a stop to prevent people from pushing them too far back underneath. If I put two long boxes on each cart then someone could roll the boxes out and still allow someone else to look thru boxes on either side without being disturbed. I looked at the clearance on a typical table last night and there definitely looks to be some room to play with in the sections without the support beams. I can see this being a receipt for disaster but if people are already having to pull long boxes up to the table to look thru them . . .

[youmechooz]

RE: the layout.

 

I assume that the convention organizer requires you to be within your 10' x 10' space?

If so you have not left space to account for the thickness of your wall display. Base measurements need to be included, and it will push any tables in front of it away.

 

just fyi

 

Not to sure what type of wall you are using.

 

I'm hoping they do not bring out the measuring tape after I'm all set up. The wall units (which I'll have attached to the booth frame and tables so they are straight up) will only be behind the smaller "inside" tables so it shouldn't be a problem pushing everything in by half a foot.

be there early and push your boundaries. Try to make your booth a 12x12 its a little easier with a corner booth. My buddy that does wizards usually makes his booth 12 x 13 or 14.

[1Cool]

RE: the layout.

 

I assume that the convention organizer requires you to be within your 10' x 10' space?

If so you have not left space to account for the thickness of your wall display. Base measurements need to be included, and it will push any tables in front of it away.

 

just fyi

 

Not to sure what type of wall you are using.

 

I'm hoping they do not bring out the measuring tape after I'm all set up. The wall units (which I'll have attached to the booth frame and tables so they are straight up) will only be behind the smaller "inside" tables so it shouldn't be a problem pushing everything in by half a foot.

be there early and push your boundaries. Try to make your booth a 12x12 its a little easier with a corner booth. My buddy that does wizards usually makes his booth 12 x 13 or 14.

 

That's what I was thinking. They seem to have huge aisles set up and I can't imagine they would pull out the measure tape on us. If I can I'll bring in another 8'x2.5' table and put that one beside the other one. I'm hoping to have at least a 3' entrance to the inside of the booth which would make the booth be more like 11'x11' at that point. If I can do that I should be able to put 22 - 23 long boxes up top which should be plenty if I remove most of the duplicates. No boxes on the ground - its decided.

[youmechooz]

My buddy has had the tape measure pulled out at a show on him before though. He made it ridiculous. One side had a 8 foot table and a 6 foot table together.

[1Cool]

My buddy has had the tape measure pulled out at a show on him before though. He made it ridiculous. One side had a 8 foot table and a 6 foot table together.

 

Yea - that would definitely be obvious. I'd think stretching it a bit and going for a 11x11 booth will be ok. We will see.

[maraxusofkeld]

Every year at the Baltimore con, there a group of individuals that sell nothing but $1, $2, and $5 books and they have droves of people constantly at their both.They do very well having dozens of long boxes. I would not let other opinions sway you from taking a lot of cheap books.

[the blob]

Every year at the Baltimore con, there a group of individuals that sell nothing but $1, $2, and $5 books and they have droves of people constantly at their both.They do very well having dozens of long boxes. I would not let other opinions sway you from taking a lot of cheap books.

 

 

nobody is saying don't bring the cheap stuff, it's just whether it is worth having another set of long boxes under the table when two people cannot exist in the same space at the same time. when i was young i'd try to look at the boxes underneath, but i'm in my 40s now and just can't do it anymore. do you potentially lose sales of books on the top of the table due to extra pushing and crowding (people reaching in between peoples' legs to look at books, etc.) in exchange for far fewer under the table book sales?

[1Cool]

Instead of starting a new thread - I thought I would just resurrect this thread and discuss some of my post Con thoughts and a Con recap.

 

Here is how the booth turned out after doing some small changes before the opening (thanks Mike).

 

[1Cool]

The blue line was where my booth should have ended but I was able to expand my booth size by a foot to foot and a half in both direction which really made a world of difference. If they would have kept me in the blue lines it would have been hard to make it work so keep that in mind.

 

I ended up using the 8' and 6' tables supplied by Wizard World on the outside making an L which held 18 long boxes worth of $1 books. I decided to offer 25 books for $20 rather then try the raffle this time which was probably a good thing since I and my helpers were swamped on Saturday and handing out raffle tickets would have been a nightmare.

 

I also thru in a bonus where every kid under 10 got a free comic from the $1 bins. This was a huge hit with the only negative being I ran out of books for little kids and girls fairly quickly and I'll stock up on those type of books in the future. Other than good will I thought the give-away would bring in the kids and the dads would grab books also. I probably gave away 300 books and most of the Dads were not comic book collectors so they thanked me for the book and kept on going. I did hear a bunch of people say it was one of the best promotions they had seen at a booth and were very happy for their kids to get their first book.

 

The added benefit I saw was the booth always was and looked busy to people passing by. Nothing seems to bring in people than a busy looking booth. I'm a huge fan of the book give away.

[1Cool]

The $1 books did surprisingly well considering they all were 90s books that were offered up on the boards first and you guys picked out most of the best books. There was still a ton of good books and a couple dealers came over and grabbed 40 - 50 books at a time with them concentrating on flashy covers like the hologram books and the glow in the dark Ghost Rider covers. I will say there was almost no demand for Valiant books - heck I even sold out all the old Wizard mags and sold 80 Darkhawk books and not one Valiant book.

 

All totaled I sold about 4 long boxes in $1 books and gave away a long box to the kids. I brought 20 long boxes with me and restocked as I went since I had 18 on the tables. The $1 boxes basically paid for the $1,000 I spent on the booth which is what I was hoping for.

[1Cool]

In terms of the non-$1 books I did pretty well but not as well as I expected. I had my books priced at a tad over E-Bay prices and my keys books like BA 12 were the lowest prices in the room (from what I saw). I did sell a ASM 300 and ASM 129 CGC 4.0 but most of the wall books I sold were in the $60 - $75 range (like 2 copies of Killing Joke, a MP 1, Secret Wars 8 in high grade). I ended up switching out my high priced slabs on Sunday to only show books under $100 and ended selling a X-Men slab for $60. People liked looking at the TOD 10 , the ASM 300 CG 9.8 and the Y: Last Man 1 CGC 9.8 but no one even asked to see them let alone make an offer.

 

I was hoping for $5,000 in total sales as a minimum and was hoping for $7,000 before the Con began. As a quick summary:

 

$800 sold on Friday (was a little scared)

$2,800 sold on Saturday (very nice considering only one slab sold)

$1,900 sold on Sunday (brisk sales for a Sunday)

 

So I did $5,500 in sales which exceeded my minimum number and based on the success of the $1 bins I will probably be back next year with even better inventory and lessoned learned.

[RCheli]

You got to sleep in your own bed at night, right? Or did you rent a hotel room?

[1Cool]

You got to sleep in your own bed at night, right? Or did you rent a hotel room?

 

I live about 20 minutes away with traffic so it was great to be able to sleep at home and not need a room. The only extra expense other than the booth fee was 2 days of parking ($18 total) and three extra dealer badges for my helpers ($120). I brought a cooler with water and food so I avoided buying food at the event which was great especially on Saturday when it was tough to get away to use the bathroom. Crazy crazy busy on Saturday!

[Junkdrawer]

Was that booth $1000 ?

[RCheli]

Food and hotel can really cut into the cost.

 

Those 2/3 extra days, plus dinner, plus all the other good stuff, just eats away at profit.

[1Cool]

Couple items that come to mind before I tell a story about Harbo.

 

1. Always ask a helper to get in line before the show ends with your loading van. Cleveland was a lot more organized then Heroes but the poor saps who waited to get in line until the 4:00 when it closed were still in line to load up when we were leaving at 5:30PM. I asked Amanda and Mike to go get in line at around 3:30 which worked out great.

 

2. It's difficult with all the chaos but really try to treat all customers like you would a board member. I got this feedback from Square and it really made my day "Overall a great shopping experience that felt personal even though we were in a busy convention environment".

 

3. Don't be afraid to say no. I got crazy low ball offers all weekend like "I'll give you $200 for that ASM 129 CGC 4.0" and I simply had to say no and usually they took it at the asking price and they said it doesn't hurt to ask. When I did say ok to a combo deal it usually was for 10% off or so since my prices were low already.

 

4. Harley is the man. I went over on Friday to say hi and he showed me a large Silver-Age collection had had just picked up in Twinsburg (a local city). He was pulling out Thor 165 in 9.0/9.2 grade and commenting how nice they were. I work in Twinsburg and Harley flies in and grabs a great collection. Like I said - he is the man.

 

5. Like Dan suggested - get helpers when the booths are that size. I was completely overwhelmed for the few minutes I was by myself on Saturday and there is no way I could have done it alone. No way.