Otakon Report
Aug. 7th, 2006 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riariAfter fifteen minutes of using tape to get the cat hair off of my chair, up to skip=40 on my friendslist, and 30 e-mails sitting in my inbox, I'm proud to say that I'm here at home again.
This is going to be more of a rambling report of Otakon, and not all that exciting either. I mean, other than what was observed behind a table all weekened, I only got to see the artist alley and some good cosplay groups on Saturday.
We arrived on Wednesday night. Our plane, of course, was delayed thanks to a connecting flight from Vancouver that had some fun with luggage needing to be unloaded and re-scanned after they were stored in our plane. One hour and fourty minutes later, we were on our way!
Thursday was an exercise in futility and waiting. Set-up for the dealers started at noon, I think. Of course, we didn't realize the two line sentence on the dealers packet where you had to register with someone off site before being able to get your van/truck to the loading dock to unload. And no, they didn't say where. After visiting the local Wal-mart, we got there and found that out. We got some vague directions to find Light St. And set off to find it, which for a dealers registration area a corner of the parking lot with not a single sign to say what you are is not a bright idea. They looked more like petitioners...with no signs.
Registered, we went back to the loading dock, where the van left after a while to do something and we stood with the stuff from the hotel in the growing heat. By the way, Balitmore had an over 100 degree heat index for Thursday. And muggy too. Isn't that fun? I found the coke machine and got us drinks to keep us from melting. At least we weren't in the direct sunlight. Just with very little air flow.
Through some happenings, and I never figured this out why it took that long, we really didn't get our stuff into the dealers room and started working on them until almost five p.m. The hotel shipment was an order that had to be directly shipped there. The rest of the stuff was freighted in. By closing at 7:30pm, we had the graphic novels laid out to the letter K. After getting lost on the way back, three of us got food at Ruby Tuesdays and called it a night.
Friday set up was fun. The usual almost to the last minute rush, and you know the time we were supposed to be there to get started? So didn't happen. The sidetrip to Wal-Mart meant that we were an hour late since it's out of the way. But the books were done pretty early and it wasn't so much a rush this year. Really! I even got a few minutes to run over to Sasuga Books to snag a few of the new releases before they got bought. Since I hardly ever get to do this on Friday. So Friday's hours, btw, was setup 8am-noon, then noon-8pm. Yeah. 11 hours on our feet considering we were an hour late. You can just figure out what I thought of this.
It wasn't too bad really. I was stationed at the yaoi/end of the graphic novels/beginning of the DVDs area. I sold quite a few pieces of yaoi. Just about all of the yaoi titles lasted until Sunday. A bunch of the new graphic novels lasted until Saturday where we started running out fast. We sold a lot of books but not as much as I think we should have. We had an odd sale going on that they did at Anime Expo. But I've been multiplying by .8 for 20% off for a lot of conventions so I was constantly redoing my calculations.
Of course the title we knew our boss over-ordered on, aka Negima v.1 DVD, did not sell as well he thought it would. Luckily we sold half of the Samurai Champloo boxsets, which we started with ten of them after I talked him down into cutting our order in half. These are $200 boxsets. So yeah. (Much better after our discount, since we were running DVDs at 20% Off all weekend.)
I can't remember if it was Friday or Saturday where this person came up to us, asked if we were Anime Pavilion, just kinda stared at me as I said our store name, and then walked off. He came back twice to ask that question. I even asked "didn't you ask that question earlier today?" He said "oh, sorry." And walked off. We had several people come up to us and ask that question. Wonder what they were advertising. Btw, Anime Pavilion had their booth split up. One area had all of the DVDs, and the other one had their books and other stuff.
We got the usual odd questions, argued with some customers about what was released and when (I tend to do this unfortunately), a bunch of people buying stuff and I stopped one person from just standing there and reading. (One of my big pet peeves at conventions and in general is just sitting there and reading the books they haven't bought.) I stared at him for a minute hoping he would kinda get it, then I bugged him about it. He left rather quickly. Got a nice comment on about how much I knew about an anime series someone asked about. Part of my job really. And I have a weird memory for it.
Saturday was also the day that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mwerevu and I cosplayed as Mori and Honey from Ouran High School Host Club. That was fun. I never cosplayed at Otakon because working and trying to find a way to get your costume up to a non-local convention was more than I was willing to deal with. But this was simple to do this time...with the exception of the five days worth of clothes I needed. Totally fun. We got recognized a lot and got some pictures taken of us. When I was on my 15min break, I also got a picture taken of me. Didn't realize the people wanted one because I was busy digging through pencil boards. The dealer there got my attention and the people got their picture. We talked with a bunch of different Ouran cosplayers. Interesting how that happens. We were so happy to see other Ouran cosplayers and they were interested in talking to us all started since we were cosplaying the same anime.
That evening we even got to run about the convention center a bit in our costumes. Visitng the artist alley was fun and I got some cards to look up early. Didn't even think of doing this until our helper was doing this. She had fun calling up sempai that day and we tried to call each other by the character names. We got to see some really big Kingdom Hearts cosplay groups. I gotmwerevu to take several pictures for me of that group and again later whem more people showed up. Even a nice Roxas character organization and Twilight Town pair. The only bad things? Having my heavy bag with me, being in pain thanks to my feet, and walking past these really freaking loud speakers. Seriously loud. I'm experiencing some bothering from my right ear since it was so loud and we walked past it twice thanks to the large group of people taking pictures of the Kingdom Hearts group. My feet being in pain is partially from standing on concrete with no shoes to help stay cool and the problems I'm having with my feet anyway....and shoes I don't normally stand in for eight hours.
Over all, its an okay convention. I especially did not like after we were told to pack quickly, which we succeeded admirably with, we had to help another certain company pack up all their crap since we were sharing tables with them. Hate that. I dislike working with their product. It's annoying and I have no interest in it. And if they had started early like we did, we may have left an hour after our side had finished packing instead of two.
Plus side, I got to talk to a few industry reps that I know and at long last, Digital Manga Press' reps. They told me that just about all of their titles are back in print, which is something I've been annoyed about when people ask for titles and I can't supply them when they're inbetween print runs. I think my next target to bother about that is Tokyopop. Loveless v.1 and Earthian v. 1 are big problems right now with me. Especially Loveless since I have a bunch of v.2 and everybody is looking for v.1.
It was also like attempted spoiler weekend. Geneon just had to be playing something from late Fafner when I walked by. And Funimation was running the Fullmetal Alchemist movie trailer when I drifted by one time. Luckily, I don't think I managed to get spoiled much. I managed to snag trailer discs from both Geneon and Funimation. I would like to go to this convention and just go to it. No working. The dealers room is huge and would probably take a day to dig through it all. Got lots of books (ten total I think) since the $5 graphic novel guy was there again. Should have tried offering for the Firefighter Daigo books. So many are out now. But I caught up on the newest Banana Fish books.
Book Purchases: Banana Fish v. 10-11, 13-14, No Man's Land v. 1, Tsubasa hardcover v.15 (stupid cliffhanger) (J), Xenosaga Episode I v. 1 (J), I Can't Stop Loving You v. 2, Boy Princess v. 3, .hack//G.U.+ v.1 (J), and xxxHolic v. 9 (J). I just got today Banana Fish v. 12, Earthian v. 4, and Tsubasa v. 10.
Chara goods: Ouran High School Host Club decals, xxxHolic Yuko pencilboard, Loveless pencilboard (which I really hope I don't have already), three xxxHolic clear files, two Tsubasa clear files (one which I think you requested a while back before A-konsarcastic_elf), and a postcard from the artists alley with Axel and Roxas on it.
Otakon is grueling to work and I am damn glad its over with. Also, live action Cromartie movie came out. So watching it this Friday. ^_^
This is going to be more of a rambling report of Otakon, and not all that exciting either. I mean, other than what was observed behind a table all weekened, I only got to see the artist alley and some good cosplay groups on Saturday.
We arrived on Wednesday night. Our plane, of course, was delayed thanks to a connecting flight from Vancouver that had some fun with luggage needing to be unloaded and re-scanned after they were stored in our plane. One hour and fourty minutes later, we were on our way!
Thursday was an exercise in futility and waiting. Set-up for the dealers started at noon, I think. Of course, we didn't realize the two line sentence on the dealers packet where you had to register with someone off site before being able to get your van/truck to the loading dock to unload. And no, they didn't say where. After visiting the local Wal-mart, we got there and found that out. We got some vague directions to find Light St. And set off to find it, which for a dealers registration area a corner of the parking lot with not a single sign to say what you are is not a bright idea. They looked more like petitioners...with no signs.
Registered, we went back to the loading dock, where the van left after a while to do something and we stood with the stuff from the hotel in the growing heat. By the way, Balitmore had an over 100 degree heat index for Thursday. And muggy too. Isn't that fun? I found the coke machine and got us drinks to keep us from melting. At least we weren't in the direct sunlight. Just with very little air flow.
Through some happenings, and I never figured this out why it took that long, we really didn't get our stuff into the dealers room and started working on them until almost five p.m. The hotel shipment was an order that had to be directly shipped there. The rest of the stuff was freighted in. By closing at 7:30pm, we had the graphic novels laid out to the letter K. After getting lost on the way back, three of us got food at Ruby Tuesdays and called it a night.
Friday set up was fun. The usual almost to the last minute rush, and you know the time we were supposed to be there to get started? So didn't happen. The sidetrip to Wal-Mart meant that we were an hour late since it's out of the way. But the books were done pretty early and it wasn't so much a rush this year. Really! I even got a few minutes to run over to Sasuga Books to snag a few of the new releases before they got bought. Since I hardly ever get to do this on Friday. So Friday's hours, btw, was setup 8am-noon, then noon-8pm. Yeah. 11 hours on our feet considering we were an hour late. You can just figure out what I thought of this.
It wasn't too bad really. I was stationed at the yaoi/end of the graphic novels/beginning of the DVDs area. I sold quite a few pieces of yaoi. Just about all of the yaoi titles lasted until Sunday. A bunch of the new graphic novels lasted until Saturday where we started running out fast. We sold a lot of books but not as much as I think we should have. We had an odd sale going on that they did at Anime Expo. But I've been multiplying by .8 for 20% off for a lot of conventions so I was constantly redoing my calculations.
Of course the title we knew our boss over-ordered on, aka Negima v.1 DVD, did not sell as well he thought it would. Luckily we sold half of the Samurai Champloo boxsets, which we started with ten of them after I talked him down into cutting our order in half. These are $200 boxsets. So yeah. (Much better after our discount, since we were running DVDs at 20% Off all weekend.)
I can't remember if it was Friday or Saturday where this person came up to us, asked if we were Anime Pavilion, just kinda stared at me as I said our store name, and then walked off. He came back twice to ask that question. I even asked "didn't you ask that question earlier today?" He said "oh, sorry." And walked off. We had several people come up to us and ask that question. Wonder what they were advertising. Btw, Anime Pavilion had their booth split up. One area had all of the DVDs, and the other one had their books and other stuff.
We got the usual odd questions, argued with some customers about what was released and when (I tend to do this unfortunately), a bunch of people buying stuff and I stopped one person from just standing there and reading. (One of my big pet peeves at conventions and in general is just sitting there and reading the books they haven't bought.) I stared at him for a minute hoping he would kinda get it, then I bugged him about it. He left rather quickly. Got a nice comment on about how much I knew about an anime series someone asked about. Part of my job really. And I have a weird memory for it.
Saturday was also the day that
mwerevu and I cosplayed as Mori and Honey from Ouran High School Host Club. That was fun. I never cosplayed at Otakon because working and trying to find a way to get your costume up to a non-local convention was more than I was willing to deal with. But this was simple to do this time...with the exception of the five days worth of clothes I needed. Totally fun. We got recognized a lot and got some pictures taken of us. When I was on my 15min break, I also got a picture taken of me. Didn't realize the people wanted one because I was busy digging through pencil boards. The dealer there got my attention and the people got their picture. We talked with a bunch of different Ouran cosplayers. Interesting how that happens. We were so happy to see other Ouran cosplayers and they were interested in talking to us all started since we were cosplaying the same anime. That evening we even got to run about the convention center a bit in our costumes. Visitng the artist alley was fun and I got some cards to look up early. Didn't even think of doing this until our helper was doing this. She had fun calling up sempai that day and we tried to call each other by the character names. We got to see some really big Kingdom Hearts cosplay groups. I got
mwerevu to take several pictures for me of that group and again later whem more people showed up. Even a nice Roxas character organization and Twilight Town pair. The only bad things? Having my heavy bag with me, being in pain thanks to my feet, and walking past these really freaking loud speakers. Seriously loud. I'm experiencing some bothering from my right ear since it was so loud and we walked past it twice thanks to the large group of people taking pictures of the Kingdom Hearts group. My feet being in pain is partially from standing on concrete with no shoes to help stay cool and the problems I'm having with my feet anyway....and shoes I don't normally stand in for eight hours.Over all, its an okay convention. I especially did not like after we were told to pack quickly, which we succeeded admirably with, we had to help another certain company pack up all their crap since we were sharing tables with them. Hate that. I dislike working with their product. It's annoying and I have no interest in it. And if they had started early like we did, we may have left an hour after our side had finished packing instead of two.
Plus side, I got to talk to a few industry reps that I know and at long last, Digital Manga Press' reps. They told me that just about all of their titles are back in print, which is something I've been annoyed about when people ask for titles and I can't supply them when they're inbetween print runs. I think my next target to bother about that is Tokyopop. Loveless v.1 and Earthian v. 1 are big problems right now with me. Especially Loveless since I have a bunch of v.2 and everybody is looking for v.1.
It was also like attempted spoiler weekend. Geneon just had to be playing something from late Fafner when I walked by. And Funimation was running the Fullmetal Alchemist movie trailer when I drifted by one time. Luckily, I don't think I managed to get spoiled much. I managed to snag trailer discs from both Geneon and Funimation. I would like to go to this convention and just go to it. No working. The dealers room is huge and would probably take a day to dig through it all. Got lots of books (ten total I think) since the $5 graphic novel guy was there again. Should have tried offering for the Firefighter Daigo books. So many are out now. But I caught up on the newest Banana Fish books.
Book Purchases: Banana Fish v. 10-11, 13-14, No Man's Land v. 1, Tsubasa hardcover v.15 (stupid cliffhanger) (J), Xenosaga Episode I v. 1 (J), I Can't Stop Loving You v. 2, Boy Princess v. 3, .hack//G.U.+ v.1 (J), and xxxHolic v. 9 (J). I just got today Banana Fish v. 12, Earthian v. 4, and Tsubasa v. 10.
Chara goods: Ouran High School Host Club decals, xxxHolic Yuko pencilboard, Loveless pencilboard (which I really hope I don't have already), three xxxHolic clear files, two Tsubasa clear files (one which I think you requested a while back before A-kon
sarcastic_elf), and a postcard from the artists alley with Axel and Roxas on it.Otakon is grueling to work and I am damn glad its over with. Also, live action Cromartie movie came out. So watching it this Friday. ^_^
