Manic May 2024 - Part 2
MCM Comic Con — Excel London — 24th - 26th May
Ah, familiarity!
We had already run a Paint and Take in Oct 2023 so had some idea of what to expect! We were able to mock out the vendor section in our back garden and we felt comfortable bombarding the MCM team with questions regarding set up timings, size and what we needed!
Back in October we were set up to cater 5 tables of 4 people every 90 minutes (or so) across 3 days. However, this May our set up was for 9 tables of 4 people! Nearly double! As I have said before, we love a challenge!
Our pre-show stress was not quite as we had anticipated! We weren’t expecting to sell so much in Portsmouth so had to do some major printing and re-stocking before MCM! As our vendor space was considerably bigger, we were able to display a lot more of our products.
The launch of our brand new laser-cut range went down so well in Portsmouth, in both sales and feedback, that we decided to produce even more and also re-design a couple of elements of our existing products!
With this confidence in our new ideas, we also chose to launch another brand new product at MCM, our Minion Duo packs! Nothing like a 2 week time pressure to make you work harder than ever before! These little duos were the perfect middle ground between single characters and our larger minion packs. We also used them to bring new species to the stall such as fairies and dwarves.
As this event was our biggest one yet we needed to enlist a new permanent member of staff. In Oct, we had the amazing Will helping us out behind the stall on the Saturday and Sunday however due to the increased Paint and Take we decided we needed help for all 3 days! Welcome to the team Joe! Having helped us at our first ever con the previous May, Joe was not expecting the madness that was to come! It is safe to say we have grown a little in our first year! We could not have done this May without him! We had the perfect rotation system for toilet breaks and food runs!
Main Difficulties (and how we rolled with them and made them work)
Being totally unprepared for how much we sold in Portsmouth! A welcome problem to have! And how did we make it work, we rallied and worked our bums off for 2 weeks solid!
Burning out! We were all broken by the end of the 3 days! Again, a welcome problem as it meant the con was a huge success (our best one yet). Sometimes we forget we are only a year in and haven’t perfected everything yet! Without a doubt our biggest challenge with multi-day cons is fuelling ourselves correctly and not just eating rubbish and barely drinking for 3 days!
Paint Explosions! Something that had never really happened before (only once). The small mixing ball was getting stuck in the paint nozzle and painters were trying to force it out… then painty boom…everywhere! We very quickly added a warning to our pre-painting spiel and info sheets and thankfully the few people that had accidents were extremely lovely and helped us help them sort it out!
Managing No-Shows/Late Comers/Turning People Away! As with any event that is free, no shows happen however it was so difficult working out when to give slots away! We learnt from October and ensured we released slots every morning to give equal opportunities to those only attending for a day and we have reached out to MCM to help us increase our numbers so we avoid turning people away!
Best Bits
As always, this event is incredibly wholesome! We started here and it holds a special place in our hearts. The guests that come to our stall are always so lovely and we feel lucky to find guests returning to our stall after seeing us at other cons. We even had Paint and Take guests returning on the same weekend so they could paint the full selection.
This year we were positioned in a miniature gaming zone! We always make an effort to introduce ourselves to our con neighbours and it was here that we met the amazing people at RP Haven (with whom we will be working with on future projects). You never know who you will meet or how important they will become so always make the effort!
As I have mentioned, MCM May 2024 was our best show to date, both financially and emotionally. We never want to take for granted the opportunities we have been given by the team at MCM. To be able to bring our hobby to the masses and introduce unsuspecting painters to a new love is always an honour!
In terms of Paint and Take, this event was also our most successful! Our preparation and planning meant that we correctly predicted the amount of models we would need and this meant we didn’t wildly over pack (which considering our car space is a wonderful thing)
UK Games Expo — NEC Birmingham — 31st May - 2nd June
The final event of our manic May and another brand new event to us! The decision to attend UKGE wasn’t an easy one. Firstly we attended the event back in 2023 to scope out whether it was for us, we then ummed and ahhed about it for a good few months before clicking Book in October 2023. As this was a brand new event for us, and nothing like our usual Comic Con style events, we were completely unsure about what would sell better and what kind of stock to take. On top of that, we also decided to take advantage of the ‘New Vendor” offer that UKGE had running (where you get the smallest style stall for a cheaper price - fantastic if you are putting the feelers out like we were). This meant that the space we were working with was considerably smaller than we were used to at MCM and we needed to take this into account.
As MCM and UKGE were so close in terms of dates we decided to focus our attention on select products to restock in the few days we had. This was particularly important as we only had one car to take with us up to Birmingham so had to squeeze it all in! Luckily, we weren’t running a Paint and Take as well, otherwise that would have been a very tight squeeze!
As is our habit, we decided ‘new con = another new product launch’... when I say we pushed ourselves this May, I wasn’t kidding! So what did we bring to this show? 2D Minion Standees. Laser cut out of dyed wood, we grouped together Goblins, Skeletons, Kobolds and Zombies. We got a fantastic response from these and even had people place orders!
Main Difficulties (and how we rolled with them and made them work)
Our arrival on set up day wasn’t really the smoothest, we couldn’t find our loading door and spent a lot of time running around and working stuff out. At the NEC you have a time limit for unloading therefore the clock was counting down as we were trying to work everything out. Luckily we are a two person team so when Jon was frantically trying to work out what was going on in the car, I ran in and picked up passes! Teamwork and patience in these situations is key. And hey, it all worked out in the end.
Working with our smallest space yet! To say it was tight was an understatement, as we had to have all our stock at hand that took up a lot of our standing space. So what we did was prioritise what we needed the most and tucked that under the table, then any empty boxes or less vital boxes were used to stand our sign on to make it stand out more.
Adjusting to a new audience. This sounds so silly however the attendees at UKGE vs. Comic Con are very different and that took some getting used to. As the event went on we had to adjust expectations, and also our display. We learnt what sold better at UKGE and made that more prominent.
Best Bits
Supporting our friend at her first ever Con! Studio Erratt (Rebecca) is a fantastic Bronze & Jesmonite Sculptor and it was amazing to see her buzzing at her first ever event!
Meeting new friends. I know I repeat this every time but it really is always a huge highlight. Being welcomed by a community and creating new friendships makes small business ownership so much easier as you finally have people that understand what you are going through.
Learning about a new event and adapting to new challenges. We have got fairly comfortable and happy at MCM events so to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and meet a different community of people felt great! It will help our business flourish, we learnt some new lessons and it opened our eyes to new opportunities.
So, will we go back to UKGE… I believe we will! We are hoping to stretch ourselves to a bigger space so we can work more freely and display more stock. We are also hoping to bring something new and extremely exciting next year so watch this space!
