Ring of Fire Con, ROFCON [VA]

[Admin Lily]

Website: ROFCON

[Admin Lily]

This review is reposted with permission. Original review here.

March 4, 2014 at 10:45am
~*Foreword*~

My overall experience at Ring of Fire Con's Artist Alley (ROF Con) was fun, amiable and completely shocking. It was an experience that I will never forget for a first year convention. Only expecting between 600 - 800 people, the attendance actually ranged to +/- 3000! I got to see a lot of acquaintances (both artists and con goers), got to put faces to people that I've only talked online to and even made some new friends.

~*Review*~

We got to Ring of Fire Con a little after 8 a.m. after a four hour drive from North Carolina to Norfolk, VA where the convention was being held. The check-in process was very smooth, easy and straight to the point. The alley was in a open hallway which meant a 24 hour artist alley, which we were fully aware of when we signed up for this convention. We were allow to claim the table we wanted and we set up near the exit in front of the Dealer's Room. It took the hubby and I around 40 minutes to set up the initial display as the hubby was still working on cutting out stuff for the keychains. There was also an exit to the parkway where we could park so lugging in our luggage for our display was not that difficult.

While we were setting up, staff and early rising con goers were already checking out the merchandise, which I enjoy as I love talking to people while setting up displays. After setting up, we started to chat with our next door neighbors at Clash of Swords who were super nice, great people to chat with and had really awesome stuff at their table!

The morning of the convention was steady wave of easy flowing traffic. We weren't super buys but we weren't dead either. It was not until the mid-afternoon that the traffic suddenly increased and we became very busy very fast.

By the end of Friday night, we realized that this convention was getting more attendees than what we were expecting as we realized that we were getting dangerously low on our badge sleeves. We had only stocked the badge sleeves for a small convention and was not expecting this amount. We had also ran out of characters that we had in stock so we knew we were going to have to print new stock when we got back to the hotel. By the time we closed up shop for the night, we knew we had to come up with a new game plan for Saturday and Sunday because we were running low on supplies.

Saturday was pretty much a repeat of Friday except it was much busier starting the morning to early evening. While we had to rearrange and set up our display differently from Friday because of our supply shortage, it wasn't too much of a hassle since we had the space to rearrange our area to accommodate this. We also had our rushes as well before and after the Dealer's Room open/closed. Things died down after the Dealer's Room closed at 6pm which was expected since the alley is located in the same vicinity of the Dealer's Room. Other than that, I got to meet up with a few other artists that I had known through the internet and had a blast connecting with them other than just through the internet.

Business was also very good on Sunday although it was traffic more like on Friday. As things came to a closed on Sunday, we had a last minute rush.


~*Closing*~

Ring of Fire Con aka ROF Con is definitely a convention to look out for. For a brand new convention, this convention completely surprised me as I was expecting new convention numbers only to end up running out of supplies for con goers. This is definitely a convention worth investing into for artist alley artists as you can find hotels that are not ridiculously high in price to spend the night, good and reasonably well priced food, good AA placement, great flow of attendee traffic and a wonderful staff. I have every intention of applying for this convention next year in hopes of getting into the AA next year!