Indiana Comic Con 2019
Indiana Comic Con is one of the family of conventions run by the Imaginarium Agency, which also runs Tampa Bay Comic Con and Michigan Comic Con. Normally it happens in the spring, but this year another organization with more clout grabbed their weekend at the Indiana Convention Center, so they ended up having to shift to Labor Day weekend, August 30 to September 1, 2019. Although we had some concerns about how the change would affect attendance and sales, the fact that it was a hometown convention made it a much better risk for us.
Load-in started on Thursday at 2PM, but because some dealers had been let in early in previous years, we decided to drive downtown to the convention center right after lunch. If nothing else, we'd get a good position in line, the way we'd done in Tampa.
As it turned out, we were allowed to drive onto the loading dock and park, but not carry anything in until it was actually 2PM. I was able to find a good place to park, very close to our entrance, so I wouldn't have quite as long a trek to schlepp every cartload. Since we were having excellent weather, I went ahead and started unloading merchandise so that I would be able to get our cart out and have it ready with the first load when we could start carrying things in.
Even with that head start, it still took a long time to get everything hauled in. I prioritized the boxes of minigrid and their connectors so the rest of the family could start building our display structures. That way they could make progress on our setup while I was making all the trips back and forth between van and booth. By the time I got everything inside, it was so late that it hardly made sense to drive the van to the parking lot, then walk back and maybe have an hour to work before I needed to walk back and retrieve it to pick up my husband. Since my feet were sore and nobody was bugging us about moving our vehicle at the late hour, I decided to just focus on getting as many of the structures built as I could while my husband worked on getting other things out.
Finally it got late enough that we decided to just call it a day. With the van right there, we were able to get on the road home quite quickly, and while supper was later than normal, it wasn't unbearably so. I got a few things done online and we turned in as early as we could manage.
The next morning the whole family piled into the car and we headed downtown, eating meal bars on the way as our breakfast to save time. I dropped the menfolk off at the convention center, then headed over to the parking lot on Maryland and Alabama. They'd raised the price again, now to seven dollars a day, but it was still cheaper than the lots right around the convention center.
I hiked back to the convention center and immediately set to work getting table covers on the tables we'd brought, then finishing building structures and getting stuff in them. As things got closer and closer to opening time, I started focusing on getting merchandise out of the aisles and inside our area so we wouldn't get in trouble for blocking the aisles. By the time we got everything ready, the exhibit hall had been open for almost an hour.
We did start getting sales, but they were still slow. As the afternoon progressed, I began to seriously wonder about how we were going to pay all our bills, especially since Michigan Comic Con had come in under expectations. As if I didn't have enough to worry about, the friend who'd promised to help us texted to let me know that she was dealing with a family medical emergency, and she would try to make it to the convention center before the exhibit hall closed so that she could pick up her badge. I knew that worrying wouldn't help her situation, but the worry hamster was going in the back of my mind the whole time.
When she finally did make it, she said that things were better on the home front, but there might be some changes in her availability due to her husband needing to be someplace else Saturday morning and not available to keep the two younger kids. However, she thought she could work it out, so we all headed off for supper at Buca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant that serves family style, with huge platters of pasta that everyone shares. Because we had an additional person eating, we decided to order the large instead of the small -- but we were all watching our portions to keep the carbs under control, so we ended up with so much left over that we filled a to-go box to take home.
I then went with my menfolk to the Conrad hotel, which doesn't mind them sitting in the lobby while I hike to the parking lot and retrieve the car. The valet parking people were even cool about helping us get our back office stuff into the trunk. We got back home in good time, and since we didn't need to get supper, I was able to get some blog posts prepared for later in the weekend before we turned in for the night.
On Saturday we repeated the process, all heading down in the car. When I got back from parking, I immediately went to work putting up the signs so people could see prices for the t-shirts, emoji masks, and other things we don't individually price. By the time I got done, the doors were opening, so we just had to deal with the customers coming in.
Our friend was running late because of parking hassles, but once she got there, she and her teenage son immediately jumped into the breach, helping us keep up with the flow of customers. When we got a break in the flow of foot traffic, I went over to the Subway by the branch of our bank and picked up food for all of us.
However, her younger children were finding the busy vendor hall far too stimulating an environment to sit and use their tablets as planned, so she decided to take them home to their dad. Except, like so much this weekend, it didn't go as planned and she ended up dealing with problems on the home front most of the afternoon, and wasn't able to get back until it was getting close to closing time. As misfortunes often do, this created a domino effect of leaving us overstretched trying to deal with the huge crowd, and I think we may have lost some sales amidst all the chaos.
However, we still did well enough that, by the time we were ready to close, I was in a much better frame of mind about the show. Even if we weren't doing as spectacularly as we'd done the previous year, I felt reasonably confident that we were on track to being able to pay our bills.
When we got home, I reheated the supper I'd prepared for us before the con began. After supper, I ran up to our storage unit to pull some merchandise to restock our shelves. Then I did a little more work online before we turned in for the night.
On Sunday my husband and I headed downtown in the van to be ready to load out. Our other family member simply wasn't up to parking the car and walking back to the convention center, so he'd agreed to bring the car when we were ready to close so that we could make sure we had enough room to get everything back home.
I got back from the parking lot in time to do a little looking around, and spoke briefly with a couple of other vendors we know. Then I had to hurry back to our booth to be ready to sell, since the doors were opening.
Sales were slow at first, but our friend and her son got there right about the time things really picked up. I was able to catch a break long enough to go over to Subway and pick up our lunches, and we were able to eat them without too many interruptions. However, sales remained strong all afternoon, even after I needed to start packing away some of the more fragile merchandise, especially the figurines and the lucky cats.
Finally the doors closed and it was time to break down in earnest. Our other family member arrived, and he was able to get at least some of the store fixtures broken down while I went to retrieve the van. However, he was worried that he could get some trouble for where he was parked, and he was getting to the point that he wasn't all that much use, so I loaded stuff into the car first so he could go home and take it easy.
After that we started in on the big push to get everything out to the van. Our friend and her son brought several cartloads of the heavier stuff down and piled it behind the van for me to sort and put into its places. However, as the process progressed, her son began to feel ill, and she became concerned enough that she decided it was time to take him home (apparently he was dehydrated, an easy trap to fall into when you're completely focused on getting the job done and don't want to interrupt it for hydrating or the consequent bathroom breaks -- I did it to myself later in the week when I was unloading some store fixtures into our garage).
However, we were getting to the point where I could just haul the last few loads out myself, dump them on the loading dock floor, and then finish loading once we'd vacated our space and were out of the way. We had some unnerving moments when I noticed flashes of heat lightning on the southern sky, but I was able to get everything in the van and actually arranged in a reasonably stable load. By the time we actually pulled out of the loading dock, it was beginning to spit a little rain, but the worst of the storms seemed to be passing well to the south of us.
When we got home, I had to get a few items out of the back seat of the car so that I would be able to sit while we headed down to Steak 'n Shake for supper. We had a rather indulgent supper with fancy shakes, but after the hustle to get everything out on time, it was definitely worth it.
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated September 11, 2019.