A month ago, I tabled at Jet City Comic Show in Tacoma, WA. We decided to make a little vacation of it instead of commuting about an hour each way for the weekend. Here’s some thoughts on the show.
- Communication before and during the show was pretty good. Load-in was simple enough once we found the correct way to get to the loading dock as there’s some confusing unconnected garages around the rear of the convention center
- Pretty slow show – doesn’t seem to have grown audience-wise since I last tabled here in 2016. I made back my costs about halfway into Saturday but it took til Sunday to see some profit
- Buttons and stickers are usually my best sellers due to the low price point but I hardly sold any this show – I did bump the cost of buttons to match stickers but I think it just wasn’t a button buying crowd
- Definitely too many vendors for the amount of people who show up – everyone I spoke to agreed with that
- (More?) panels would possibly help draw people in? JCCS wants to focus on the show aspect and deliberately doesn’t call itself a convention but this probably hurts attendance
- A bunch of floor space was dedicated to model cars / celebrity signings but the room is large enough to not crowd out vendors – I didn’t see anyone lined up for these when I went to walk around
- There was a row along the wall dedicated to some really impressive themed Lego builds which was a cool addition to the show
- There were a couple rows of artists who got separated from the rest of the artist alley and I didn’t know they were there til late on Sunday – this was because of waitlist additions after the floorplan was finalized
- Aisles were well spaced with plenty of space behind vendor tables, but maybe too much space as a very Bold kid decided to Heelie his way down a row somehow avoiding people’s luggage and banners
- No problems with cell reception so taking payments was a breeze
- I do want to spend some more time in Tacoma so I’ll consider the show again if I end up with a light con schedule for 2020 and/or don’t get into other shows scheduled for the same weekend
Overall not super worthwhile if you’re traveling over an hour to sell at the show. I prepared for the show to be slow and was able to do some drawing between customers. Most of my sales seemed to be to other vendors which was fine because I made some new friends.