Michigan Comic Con 2018
Michigan Comic Con is a brand new convention in Detroit, put on by the same people who run Indiana Comic Con and Tampa Bay Comic Con. This year it was held over the weekend of August 17-19, 2018 at the COBO Center in downtown Detroit. That's the same venue where we do Youmacon in November, but Michigan Comic Con was using a different hall than the one Youmacon uses for their dealers' hall.
Because we wanted to be rested and ready to load in on Thursday, especially since this convention wasn't letting us drive onto the exhibit floor and unload, we drove up on Wednesday. We stopped at the Sam's Club in Toledo to pick up some stuff, which I then had to get into the van. I ended up having to unload some stuff and then put it back in around our acquisitions.
Then we continued to the Detroit area, where we stopped at a mall which still has a Vitamin World. We had so much trouble getting to it that we decided to go the rest of the way to our hotel on surface streets. Once we got there, we had a little trouble getting checked in because the desk clerk was new and unfamiliar with the computer system. But once we got everything squared away, we got a really nice room. I hauled everything in and then did some stuff on the Internet. We also had supper and I did a little more writing before turning in for the night.
On Thursday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. It might not have included some of the things we got at the hotel where we used to stay while in Detroit, but at least we didn't have to put up with an offhand attitude on the part of the staff.
Since we couldn't load in until well after lunch, we decided to go out to the lobby and eat lunch. While we were waiting for it to more closely approximate a reasonable time to arrive at the COBO Center, there was an announcement on the TV news that Aretha Franklin had died. I'd heard earlier in the week that she'd gone into hospice, but the news of her passing still came as a surprise.
So it was in a rather somber mood that we headed downtown. It didn't help that we were getting a light but steady drizzle, which did not bode well for load-in. Unlike Youmacon in the fall, which has arrangements to let everyone drive onto the show floor, right up to their booths, we had to park in the loading dock area and haul everything in. I'd brought plenty of tarps, but they're light enough that even a relatively light breeze can blow them awry, and there's always the problem of getting the merchandise out of the vehicle and under the tarp.
When we got to the COBO Center, we thoroughly expected to have to sit and wait in line, the way we always do at Youmacon. Instead, we were able to go ahead and drive up to the dock area, but weren't allowed to take merchandise onto the exhibit hall floor until the actual time. Everything was handled more casually than at Youmacon, and I was given only general directions as to which dock I was supposed to go to. I was able to get on one of the ramps that lead into the exhibit hall floor, and I even pulled up far enough that I was under an overhang. This offered us at least a little protection from the rain as I dug out our cart and started getting a load ready to haul in.
The union guys brought some pallets, and I was able to stack some of our t-shirts and other sturdy stuff on them to be hauled in via forklift. However, I was not sure I really wanted to put fragile porcelains and figurines onto them, unless I could stack those boxes safely between boxes of t-shirts to reduce the chance of a catastrophic topple.
Finally the doors opened and we could locate our booths and start hauling in. The pallet loads sure did help, but I still had a lot of stuff to haul in by hand. By the time I got the last load hauled in, our van was pretty well bricked in by several other vehicles parked behind it. Since there was no way to find the owners of the vehicles that had me bricked, I decided to focus on getting as many structures built as possible, then go back later to get the van moved to parking.
I was able to get all the t-shirts out, and in the process discovered several designs that had been reduced to the point it didn't make sense to give them a hutch of their own. So I moved them to the odds and ends box and hung up an example shirt. However, I didn't get a whole lot of time to set up the figurine hutches and get all the other merchandise out, because it got late enough that we were both getting tired and hungry.
Rather than risk being too tired to safely drive back to the hotel, we decided to knock off early and headed out to our vehicle. At least now we weren't completely bricked in, but there were a couple of vehicles in awkward spots, so we had to carefully inch past them until we were clear.
We made it back to the hotel in reasonably good time and had a very late supper. Then I did a little writing before we turned in for the night.
On Friday we got up early and ate breakfast at the hotel. Then we hurried back downtown to finish our setup. We were almost finished when the doors opened, but there was no time to get our signs up. However, sales were still reasonably good, and in some ways better than Tampa Bay Comic Con two weeks earlier. By the time we got done, I was feeling much more positive about the con than I had at the corresponding point in Tampa.
In the evening we went back to our hotel and had supper. I did some writing and a blog post that I hadn't done earlier. Then we turned in for the night.
On Saturday, we had the convention's complimentary breakfast, then headed downtown for the big sales day. We got the signs up, then had a little time to look around.
Then the doors opened and the crowd began to flow in. However, a lot of our sales were small items -- Japanese bells and erasers, emoji masks, etc. They're good to have and they do add up, but only very slowly. On the other hand, we were going through stocks of product that I'd intended to hang onto for the following weekend's convention. I was quite astonished, since I thought that a hundred of one emoji mask design would be more than enough for all three August conventions. Obviously I'd underestimated the market for it.
In the evening we drove back to the hotel in pouring rain, which meant I had to keep the speed down on the freeway. I was quite glad to get back and have supper, then do a little more work on the writing before turning in for the night.
On Sunday we headed back downtown for the final day of the convention. The parking situation was a mess, thanks to a catastrophic communications failure between the concom and the company running COBO Center rooftop parking. We ended up having to park at a nearby lot that charged us double, which was very annoying.
At least once we got in, I was able to do some looking around. Then the doors opened and we started having sales. After a while I stopped feeling so annoyed about having to deal with incompetents who don't know how to be the customer-facing representative of their company, and was actually happy to get some good sales. Unfortunately, we had to start packing early to make sure that we would be out in reasonable time, so I'm sure we lost some sales.
When the doors closed and it was time to load out, there was further confusion as to who was to go where. However, I was able to get our merchandise and store fixtures loaded out before the midnight deadline, although we were one of the very last dealers out and I had to ask the guard to unlock the gate so we could leave.
I was very glad to get back to the hotel and be able to fix our supper for the night. Then I scribbled a few lines before turning in for the night.
On Monday we ate the hotel's breakfast, then packed up our belongings and got them out to the van so that we could check out. Then we headed back home, stopping in Toledo to make our deposit at a branch of our bank and to pick up some stuff at Sam's Club for our next convention.
At first it seemed like we were making fairly decent time. But then we ran into some truly nasty thunderstorms on I-69 south of Fort Wayne. There were times when the visibility was so terrible that I had to slow down to about twenty miles an hour and creep along with my emergency flashers on, hoping that nobody would rear-end us.
I was very glad to finally get home. However, I was less than happy to discover that a package which had been delivered over the weekend did not contain our shipment of fox tail keychains. Instead, we got a huge pile of random brightly colored garments. So I ended up having to take a bunch of pictures and go through a whole bunch of digital contortions to get the images to my vendor, since that platform doesn't handle Macs properly.
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated June 21, 2019.