All I can say is everyone I saw was spending between $500 and $2000, and the massive crowds were still there. That's on average, some probably spent $5-10,000. In past years people walked away from lotteries without toys, this year it seemed like everyone got something. If they didn't it was because they had spent their money elsewhere or were at a different coinciding event. Toy prices have gone up, and toys have gotten bigger, both in size, production run, and popularity. It was the first time I talked with collectors saying they had been "outpriced" by a creator, while masses still claw to get those toys. It really is a tough time to be a new collector who hasn't decided what to collect, or a seasoned collector who collects more than 3 brands. Probably as tough as it is to be a toy creator who gets out hyped by bigger names or brands.
Yeah I'd say 80% of my sales were Friday, 5% Saturday, and 15% Sunday. This was my debut though, and I had fun and basically covered my booth and part of my Hotel. I'm still planning on going next year, but who knows what it'll be like.
From my perspective, it’s for sure all over the place. Personally I did great. I also think this is due to me owning my own gallery space and just constantly trying to push forward. I definitely don’t see the sofubi bubble burst. I just think collectors change and brands become more of a lifestyle than just random purchase. Also it helps to have presence with other even larger makers. Again me having my own release with Medicom could have helped, although not a single Alien sold. Convention wise, I liked Pasadena much better. This was too massive, and I
Sorry phone got cut off and for some reason SB and my iPhone don’t get along. But yeah, I HATED the security. My lottery sales went from 4 till close when they started turning off the lights on me. We stayed with flashlights on and asked if people in line could just finish up. But they were so rude and didn’t care, so it was me eventually telling them to fuck off and just kept going until I got everyone who stuck around taken care off, with the rest being sold on Sunday. I don’t think I’ll do DCON every year, I don’t think it’s necessary. I prefer my shop shows, smaller and more focused where I can actually take care of the people who attend in a relaxed manor. I also ended up missing many artist I wanted to visit because of it being so large. And I also did all my buys on friday.
I thought you guys did fine. I got most of the toys I was content with from your booth anyways. ☺ I wanted to get one of those other Zollmen figures from the Fairycookies booth at first but I didn't even bother when I heard it was a lottery. I'm assuming a lot of others thought the same thing.
We did well. I just empathise with small vendors that wre 1 single artist. I also saw the drop off from Friday to Saturday. The toys we had were diverse and sold decent. 2 that I wasn't sure about pretty much sold out(friday teleases), 2 others that I thought might need lotteries have a few leftover(saturday releases). It was a bit all over the place which I think reflects the con as a whole.
They had no choice, but to move the con. One of the halls in Pasadena was already booked, you can’t grow a show as big as it was and then lose 1/3 of the space. Also to Ben's credit, he did some really amazing things.He got more Japanese vendors including Medicom to come out to the show and got a lot of vendors off the wait list and into a booth. All that does is increase the chances of seeing more vendors that have never shown stateside, making the trek. This show, much more than others, also got collectors from all over to the show, more so than any other year. As far as the show being a cash cow, Five Points is almost twice the price with much less to offer. Running a booth is hard work, I can't imagine what goes into running a show. He should be well paid for it and I think the show delivers great value for the cost. It was a growth year for the show, for sure. The venue and amount of vendors grew a little bigger than the current attendance and that definitely hurt some vendors. However, some vendors have also been phoning it in for a minute and doing okay at shows with much less choice and took a hard L on this one. Bad shows happen to lots of vendors, you either switch things up, or go a different route. I do miss the quaintness of Pasadena and all the bars and restaurants, but i don't miss being sardine canned into aisles and having pissed off vendors during packed middle aisle lottos. There was also plenty of room to talk and hang out without being in the way of other attendees. Also, while DCON is far far from SDCC, would it be terrible if it turned into the SDCC of old? It was the mecha of US toy shows. There were plenty of happy toy nerds. read the old threads.
These are very good points, Jeff. Particularly about the time and effort that Ben puts in. I guess I got tunnel vision from my thought process with how many vendors seemingly just had no place or market there. Filling up space to fill up space, which is what made it felt like monies was just bein’ made off of booths. Lots of heads buried in their tables with little to no traffic. Kind of seemed like wasted space/monies for vendors, but I suppose that’s ultimately on the vendor. I appreciate the dialogue and different perspective! Even still, like you and others, I do miss Pasadena a lot. And I do still see this goin’ the way of SDCC of now.
As it goes more towards a con like sdcc, I can see some changes made. An addition of a small press and an artist alley would be nice. More affordable booths for vendors with lower priced items. We go there for toys that are expensive, and in general 1 run that sells out can cover a booth. We forget about artists with smaller items like pins, prints, or mini figures who might have a much harder time doing this. Their items all range from $10-20, so reaching $600 can be tough. A lot do it primarily for exposure. I'd hate to see a lot of them go away. I'm sure Ben sees everything and gets excellent feedback. I know this transition was a trial run and there will always be improvements. As an example, think about Rich's first show at Death's Vault and how much he has improved in 3 years. It runs super smooth now. I think that's what will happen with Dcon, every year a little bit of improvement. While I see it becoming more like sdcc in size, I can't imagine it becoming that. I know Ben will find sponsors like medicom that make it more commercially driven, and I know they are footing the bill. I still enjoy the other 90% of the booths. Most booths are artist run and owned. When I talk to any vendors they are all genuine and excited to hear that you enjoy their product. While they want you to buy stuff, seeing a reaction from a fan is just as encouraging. That is what makes dcon great and I believe it will stay this way.
I'm just happy Medicom is bringing more vintage styled Kaiju to the show which is what the con sorely lacked in 2017. Hopefully if they keep coming back they will allow us to eventually buy more Godzilla and even Ultra Man monsters from them in the future.
I had a lot of fun, met some great awesome artists and collectors. I scored almost everything I wanted (I heard that Mondo was selling multiple Shirahamas to people, which if true is NOT cool) that I knew about (found out about an awesome artist Saturday night that was one day only), partially due to dumb luck but mainly due to planning. Far and away that would be my biggest piece of advice for fans would be to plan your route. I had all the artists I wanted to hit up, their booth location, and drop times for lottos. The one thing I will say kind of pissed me off about the con was the amount of Chinese flippers with vendor badges. There will always be flippers and there ain't much you can do about it when you work at this scale, but if a single table wants 20 of them, that should raise some red flags and perhaps badges should be more limited based on table size. Yeah, definitely will say prices are all over the place. I scored a giant Punk Drunkers for $170 that I thought was dirt cheap. It's weird to see stuff like that and a couple of isles over something that's half the size with a weaker paint job could cost twice as much or more. I hope that Wonder Goblin and I can make something unique with Kaiju Cult here in Atlanta. Giant airport so airfare is plentiful, real estate is cheap so doubling up with people on an AirBNB can cut down costs, and having a large amount of artists that we can manage will make the focus more about enjoying the show and less about the purchasing blood bath. I do think the con should maybe force some centralized management of lottos schedule-wise. There will always be a situation where you have to pick one artist over another, but if everything goes Friday it'll be a nightmare. Yeah, security does not understand the hobby, which is a problem. I went from #10 or so in the RxH/Punk Drunkers line to #25 with Chinese flippers nudging their way in front of me to #250 when they moved the line and didn't coordinate. I had to say something along with a bunch of other people.
I'm gonna get out of lurk mode for a quick bit here. DCon for us was great this year. Very glad we sold on Friday, being a small fry in the sofvi scene I had nothing to loose. Last year wasn't soo good as we where stuck in Pasadena DCon's infamous hall-c. We sold out almost half of our inventory on Fri which blew us away and by Sunday we only had a few of our Parasights left. Moving to Las Vegas/Henderson NV from NC made it easier to do cons in Cali. No plane tickets and relatives makes it easy to manage kids. My only negs this year was, I didn't have enough time to shop (tho I did mange to pick up a few pieces), parking was expensive and the parking lady during setup on thurs was a hag on the rag from hell, funko, and the vibe like DCon is gonna turn into an SDCC monster. We're def doing it again next year and with a new game plan (toy design wise) based on feedback and what we've observed, ]we hope to break the sofvi monotony. [INSTA
I was in that RxH line with Carl Clear With Guts. It was fucked how the security messed up the line. They had no idea what they were doing. piss poor attempt at crowd control. I used to work loss prevention at Tower Records/Video and managed quite a few in store signings (and ticketmaster sales) that were run better than that shit show. What was also fucked was the chinese flipper mafia getting there at like 830am and trying to line up then. *Which really pissed off Mori from what I heard. The flipper squads were in full regalia. It was nuts. I have a pic of the RxH line on my ig Tony_mecha and there are like 6 flippers right in front of me in the pic. Their General went to go poop i think and wasn't in the shot. When he came back, he was barking orders to each of them that if they failed, they'd be swimming home or not allowed to come back next year. These kids were on their phones on forums in china posting and getting customer orders LIVE. It was crazy!!
My haul from the hall: Generously nabbed for me by one among us who was actually in California last weekend. Thanks! Zazahn, Pigmon, Max Toy, Rampage Toy, mini, micro, DCON
After having a wonderful DCon experience, I've taken some time to decompress and wanted to share the following. Here are some problems I observed that will hopefully be addressed in the future: 1. First and foremost, security and their unprofessional attitude that infected the venue. I heard stories from attendees and accomplished artists RE: how unprofessional the security were. Truthfully speaking, I thought these were isolated instances, but then I witnessed the rude and unaccommodating actions of security firsthand. To say that I was utterly appauled by how they treated vendors and attendees is an understatement. The problematic reality (a.k.a. the three thousand pound elephant in the room) is that this venue's security just doesn't understand and/or care about our culture and that is a cause for concern. In their minds it didn't matter if sofubi, sports cars or weapons were being sold. Truth be told, many people spent quite a bit of money to attend this event, but I can't help thinking that security mistakenly saw most of us as fat-walleted grazing cattle with money to burn. In my humble opinion, a little bit of sensitivity training for security could benefit all of us in the long run. 2. Funneling a packed line of VIP's through one door during preview night was ludicrous. There are far more efficient, safe, and productive ways to manage lines of people. 3. The Chinese flipper army possessing vendor badges. I honestly don't know what the solution for this is, but it's definitely got the ire of Mori and many others. To reiterate, I had a wonderful time and recognize that there will be unavoidable growing pains when jumping to a larger space. I genuinely appreciate the hard work Ben, DCon, and the vendors put into this event. I also recognize that there is always a learning curve and room for improvement which maximizes the experience for Dcon Management, vendors, and attendees alike.
I have been wondering the same. A soft vinyl Iron Giant is a bit of a dream toy, but I am not personally familiar with any Mondo produced sofvi . I’m hoping it’s all positive though (then I can get rid of these large bulky hard plastic versions too).
Right? We made really good time then 2 1/2 hours from pasadena to anaheim. Which made me arrive two hours late. But there are so many toys that I couldn't really miss out on anything.
Thank You! That helps a lot. It’s now on my wants list. Not attending Dcon, I cannot speak on any opinions taken away from the event, but I think it is interesting hearing people mention SDCC; when I saw pictures of the T-Rex, SDCC is immediately what came to mind. What is the story there? Was it on display as part of an artist’s / studio’s work , on loan from a museum, promoting the Jurassic Park franchise, etc ?
@boon velvet They curated a Jurassic Park 25th Anniversary exhibit which featured a variety of artists. As well as JP installations including a branded JP vehicle and assorted items including the T-Rex. There was also a 3-D painting complete with 3-D glasses that you could look through. One of my faves was the jeep being chased by T-Rex. The jeep was full of members of the Wu Tang Clan, instead of Jeff Goldblum and the supporting cast.
Friday night i sold 60-70% of everything i had. Saturday i only made $200 and Sunday $100. If i would have waited i would have lost out in the sales. I love the wide isles, and the many new toy booths. I hate that nothing is close by out side, but i did love Golden Road Brewing. Great beer and great food.
Mango cart is a favorite, all of their "cart" beers are good. They have a lot of good veggie options for a bar, if that's your thing.
I liked Palidades Pinapple when i needed something lighter i had the Wagyu Beef Cheese Steak and oh boy it was sooo good.