This review is reposted with permission. Original post is
here.
Foreword
I had a lot of high hopes for this convention as I was informed by the director of the convention that it was fanart friendly, they were expecting an attendance of 7000, and they had big named guests coming to this convention. Unfortunately these hopes were crushed on day number one and throughout the weekend.
While this convention did have two pros to it (table space and price), the rest were cons and turned out that in a way, it was a mistake to attend this convention. It is our first convention since starting out, that was a failed convention experience for us, especially artist alley wise.
Names have been withheld in respect for staff privacy.
—Before the Convention (a first in my reviews)—
Each artist and vendor recieved a “Vendor Pack” that gave them the information that they would need and what to expect in the upcoming weeks before the convention. The convention had promised a few
things for artists and vendors:
1) A layout plan of the exhibit hall that the vendors and artists would share.
2) A table number
3) Free parking in one of the garages in Knoxville
The hours for the Dealer’s Room (where we were going to be located) were a bit odd as I have seen several conventions and what they have listed as the hours for the Dealer’s Room. This was the earliest closing Dealer’s Room I have ever dealt with and the only one where I had seen
restrictions for a Friday. The hours followed like this:
Friday: 4:00pm - 8:00pm (VIP and Pre-registration Weekend Passes Only)
Saturday: 10:00am - 6:00am (Open to the Public)
Sunday: 10:00am - 5:00am
A week before the convention, I still hadn’t received any notification about where the exhibition hall was going to be at as well as the table number I would be setting up at. I e-mailed the convention staff, thinking that I may have missed an e-mail and I received a reply a day later.
First and foremost, I learned that I didn’t miss any e-mails. In fact, this was their reply, exactly how it was sent to me:
(external link of image since tumblr made it small:
s510.photobucket.com/user/paprikastudios/media/emails-censored_zps8d64399f.jpg.html)"we are tweeking a lot so no you havent missed your number we are still finishing. the artist alley is in the vendor room and yes it will be locked and yes it follows the vendor hours."
Not the best sentence structure but I figured this was probably sent from a phone or tablet device so I didn’t think anything of it.
—FRIDAY—
We arrived at the convention center a little after 12pm so that we could go sign in, get our badges and find out where our table number was so we could go ahead and setup. Entering the convention center, we noticed one thing that really stand out……there was no one there. There were no signs. It was dead. We ended up walking around the convention center until we found a group of people.
Guessing that they were probably convention staff or staff of the convention center, I asked them politely where we could sign in to get our badges for the Marble City Comicon. Their reply was simple enough:
"Oh that con? That’s in the basement! Our convention is up here."
The lady said this in such a condescending tone, you could only imagine my look at both her tone and the answer. The convention was in the basement? In my mind, I’m honestly thinking that this lady must have been mistaken. Sure enough, that is where we found the Exhibition Hall aka the Dealer’s Room where we were going to be located. Strange but we just went with it. Later we found out that the convention only rented out one hallway and the basement area for the convention.
At checkin, it was pretty much smooth but rather unprofessional. The person checking me in never checked my ID to verify that I was indeed the person who’s name is affliated with paprikaSTUDIOS - in fact, I had to remind him to give us our badges. It was another strange start but we continue to go with it. When we got to our table, we had an 8ft table and the con provided the table cloth and skirt (orange and white). The space between the the artist behind me was a good amount of spacious space so we could set up a work area to provide product on the spot when someone would buy a keychain or badge from us. It allowed for easy access to our stock.
We then realized that we didn’t have a guide book so we could plan when possible rushes could happen. When inquiring for a guidebook, we were informed that the company that the convention had outsourced their guide books to had failed to ship the product to them. It was suppose to be there the day of the convention. Last minute put together bare bone copies of what resembled something of a guidebook was handed out to people in stead. The “guidebook” was printed out on 11x18 copy print paper with time schedules and a layout of the dealer’s room - that’s it. There was nothing in there about the guests, explanation of the events or panels, nothing. One of the convention staff members informed me that they hoped to get the guidebooks sometime on Saturday (Note: Which never happened and ended up calling out events on the microphone in the Dealer’s Room).
When the Dealer’s Room opened at 4pm, it was dead. We only made 4 sales from the time of opening to the time of closing. It was the first time since we’ve started attending artist allies that we didn’t have to go back to our hotel room and restock. I was really scratching my head at this,
thinking why a convention such as this would restrict a Friday to guests and treat it to what felt like a Thursday night for a pre-con night. I could only hope Saturday would be much better.
—SATURDAY—
Saturday morning, I began to realize that we made a mistake coming to this convention. As I walked out of our hotel that morning, we saw lots of runners and lots of people wearing orange and white with the letter “T” on them. For those who don’t know, Tennessee’s popular college team’s colors are orange and white and are typically represented with a letter “T” on their shirts if not displaying the full college team’s name. I knew at that time, there were more events going on this weekend but the question was, how many?
Since it was prepping hours for the vendors and artists, I needed to make a run to our table to grab something and head back to the hotel room. The prepping time was from 8am until opening. I was there exactly at 8am (we didn’t get into the dealer’s room until 8:45) and I saw actual vendors on the floor waiting for someone from the convention staff to come and let them in. When I asked them about it, they let me know that no one from the staff was there and the doors were NOT LOCKED! Even though the convention informed me in an e-mail personally that we would be in a locked room, the doors were not locked! I mean, what the hell?!
Isn’t the whole purpose of being in the Dealer’s Room is to be in a locked room? Deciding to join the vendors on the floor, I learned that the vendors were not doing well in sales either and some were even upset. There constantly seemed to be communication and deadline issues between the vendors/artists and the convention staff.
Talking to the vendors and artists who were now waiting, I found out that there was a game going on that weekend with free admission and free parking, a parade, and the children’s medical benefit that was being held in the same convention center as Marble City Comicon along with a running marathon. The free parking was obsolete for events and charged $20 a day and my fears were confirmed that there were other events taking place the very same weekend of Marble City Comicon;
it was 4 events.
Trying to stay positive, we were still hoping that there were people who still wanted to go to the con regardless of these events going on, right? While not as dead as Friday, the traffic for the convention center was horrible. I had less than 30 sales from 10am - 6pm. The only positive thing that came out from Saturday was meeting and chatting with other really awesome and talented artists. But in terms for vendors/artists and con goers, the sales were horrible.
**SUNDAY**
Sunday unfortunately was no better. I had made only 5 sales at most. By the time noon came around, over half of the artists had packed up and left and vendors were leaving at this point. There was just not enough business to justified staying til 5 o’clock. When 2:30 hit and we hadn’t had a customer for the past couple of hours, we finally decided to also follow suit and pack up. Before packing up though, I decided to ask one of the main staff members if we were allowed to use the loading dock and if we could use it before the closing of the con. I was told yes.
After packing up, I went ahead and moved my car from the parking garage and to where the loading dock was located. I was met with a locked loading dock. Following the directions of how to gain access to the dock, I went to the telecom and informed them that I was a vendor with Marble City Comicon and needed access to the loading dock. I was told by security that was not possible and I was given incorrect information since they were not allowed to open the gates until 5:00pm.
There was no point in arguing with the security guard so I had to park my car in a tow away zone of the convention center in order to pack my van up; other vendors were doing the same thing. So it was a rush scenario to pack up my car to basically avoid getting a ticket from state officials all because I was given incorrect information from the convention staff yet again.
— FINAL WORD AND OPINIONS —
In the end, Marble City Comicon was a huge let down. Not because of the con goers but because of the staff. While I did encounter con goers who said, “Oh she does anime” I did meet con goers there who were fans of anime or both anime/comics. It felt like the convention in the end was put together at the last minute with the expection of only booking high end guests.
I highly warn artists that if you have to stay in a hotel room to attend this convention, TO STAY AWAY! I also highly warn artists who can do this convention driving to and from their home every day to proceed with little trusts in the convention staff as any information coming from them was
either poorly judged or incorrect. Mis-communication, poor planning, poor advertising of the staff is this convention’s downfall.
There were other con goers we found in the area that didn’t even know about the convention who said they would have gone at least one day if they had knew about it. It was so sad to see a convention who had a great site and high end guests to fall so short on expectations. The worst part of it all, convention staff continued to give incorrect or mis-communication - including the director of the convention it self.
I have no plans to ever return to this convention and in fact plan to stay clear of it. I will look for other anime conventions in the Tennessee area as I did enjoy talking to the con goers but unfortunately it will not be for this convention.
