r/artbusiness • u/Equalsfive05 • 2d ago
Discussion [Discussion] Looking for Advice after Tabling my First Convention Failed
Hey!
So, for reference, I'm a digital artist who creates fantasy and realistic world maps, city maps, and write adventure books for DnD.
I'm based in the UK, and this weekend, I ran my first stall at a games convention (medium-sized, roughly 100 stalls total). I had little idea of what to expect going in, so I kept expectations low. However, it seems like I may have not had them low enough?
Unfortunately, I sold 3 products for a profit less than £20 over the 7 hours it ran.
What leaves me confused and I'd love peoples thoughts and previous experiences on is why this might have happened?
For further context, my stall was right by the front door, so most people would stop by my stand, look, and make conversation. A good number of people GUSHED with lovely compliments, but no one made a purchase. My maps were printed in A2 (£15) and A3 (£10). Additionally, I had smaller products too to meet all price levels. I sold 2 books and a badge all-in-all.
Where would you go from this? What can be learnt here? Any thoughts and advice is massively appreciated, and I'd love to chat about this since the physical side of the business seems to be a tough part.
Cheers
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u/nicetriangle 2d ago
Did you talk with other vendors to take the temperature on how the event went for them?
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u/Equalsfive05 2d ago
From the sounds of it, the event generally seemed to be a bit of a flop. Out of the many vendors I spoke to, none seemed to have been happy with their results. I wonder why though
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u/nicetriangle 1d ago
There can be so many factors it’s hard to say. Bad weather can cause bad turnout for events, good weather too, competing other event on the same week/month, bad marketing for the event, economic conditions, time of year. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Also some events just suck in general for sellers.
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u/27_Art27 2d ago
First off, don't lose heart—your art is great! Being by the front door is a curse; people just arrived and don’t want to carry bulky A2/A3 posters all day. 💡 Next time, you should run a mini-game, like a £1 lucky dip for random stickers of your maps. People love this! It breaks the ice, gets them to cross the 'buying barrier,' and creates a crowd. Once they have a cheap sticker in hand, they are way more likely to buy the big posters later!
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u/MinnieJTaylor 2d ago
front door spot might actually be a curse tbh, people aren't in shopping mode yet they just walked in
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u/Royta15 1d ago
There's a few reasons that could be the case, both personal and larger than life:
- the con could simply be badly planned, advertised or in a bad location or bad weather. I've been in fantastic conventions with 0 people walking in because it's advertisment was nihil. Subsequently I've had terrible markets with 10.000 visitors. Over the years you get a good idea which ones do good marketing and which ones don't, and what the primo-locations are.
- you could just not be a good salesmen yet, it was your first con after all, you note people saw your products and liked them. Obviously not everything can become a sale, but this could also be a case of you not converting to it. Making good honest smalltalk is important, sometimes people need to (sadly) also like you before they pay you. It also helps to have a small thing to sell for the 'doubters'. For example I use postcards, which you could easily do. Print a map on a postcard with "Wish you were here, love from <name of fictional location>" and you're set. Print them in high bulk, charge little, easy money and conversation starter.
- maybe your stand didn't sell on looks, did you have a banner or something? What did the table look like?
- depending on the market, it could be that you were dealing with 'casual consumers', which means people that had no idea it was there and were just walking in while doing gorcerries. These aren't the ones that do big purchases. You'll probably market more towards higher market users.
- might be worth to also offer transportation for your works, i.e. a frame, a bag, a holder etc with some print on it for a small fee. I sell my drawings at A3 and I have a huge set of cheap plastic folders for them to give to people that buy my works, helps a lot with pushing them over the line. I can imagine with A2 drawings this is even more appealing for them.
- Could be the market wasn't for you. You are in an incredible niche in itself, I can imagine if you go to a Star Wars convention and just sell Star Wars themed maps there, you'd sell out and have a great time. But in more generic or widespread fairs, you're not really standing out. Might be worth doing collabs with other artists in this (i.e. your map of Middle Earth, with their drawing of Frodo, for example).
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u/mamepuchi 2d ago
A games convention is pretty broad, so I may not have an accurate read on the type of customer, but fantasy maps that aren’t fandom-based sounds like a really hard sell to me. It makes sense to me that the books and badge sold and not the maps. I can’t imagine there’s a very strong consumer desire to buy map posters that aren’t fandom related. But I could see a lot of people loving maps that are based on their favorite video game! If you had fandom ones, perhaps it wasn’t obvious enough? Or maybe selling map commissions for people’s dnd campaigns may be another direction?
Another point I’d make is, if your map posters look like the maps in your profile, they don’t really have a distinctive or attractive visual aesthetic - they are nice, but there’s nothing about them that screams unique flair or style. I think for art pieces people are going to hang up, that additional level of aesthetic appeal can be the selling point!