Monday, July 22, 2013

SDCC 2013

Our booth this year

I'm back at SDCC 2013. I was actually really nervous because we have a new location this year and it's very far from the center area where all the crowds are. The booth is already super expensive and the corner booth costs even more. Every year, they'd up the price by a few hundred dollars too. Hotel costs another $300 per night. Everything adds up so fast, so I was really scared that I won't make back the cost. Aside from that, I was pretty prepared this year. Randy, Sunny, Mitsu, and James have been helping me with some preparations and they were also helping me at the booth too. I'm so blessed with such wonderful friends. Even though I'm there every year, the first day is always overwhelming. There are SO many people!
The crowd! You can't even walk...

We have a few new merchandise this year. One is the Penguin superhero costume. I'm glad that they really made a lot of people laugh and they were selling very well. I also got custom printed biodegradable balloons of puffer seals made. I always thought they'd look super cute floating around the convention. Sunny handmade some pillow plushes of Narwhals, Alligators, and Puffer seals, and we also had glow in the dark drawstring bags too.

In the end, we did pretty well overall. *phew*. There were a lot of happy faces. Some customers would come by everyday to buy new things or at least to say hello. A lot of people came to tell me how much they still love their yetis and penguins that they purchased 2 years ago. A few people stopped by to show me pictures of the purchased artworks that are now framed and hung on their walls. I was so touched! I really try hard to make sure that all my merchandise are well made with really high quality materials, so I am glad that people are noticing and appreciating that. I am so glad that I have so many repeated customers and it always make me so happy to hear positive feedback. On Saturday, Frank Frazetta's daughter came by and bought a lot of my prints. She said they are going in her dad's room next to her dad's artworks! I felt so honored. All these happiness totally made me less sad about the fact that I lost my iphone on the last day of the show. I only miss some of the pictures I have in there. To whoever that took my iphone *waves fist*, I just want my pictures back! T_T.
As usual, the con had so many interesting people. The cosplayers were amazing. There were a lot of cool giveaways. It was the first SDCC for Kim (my friend) and I think she had a blast. James' wife came this year too! James got a giant box of a Transformer toy as well as My Little Pony DJ lol (totally an impulse buy). Thank god, I had Randy, Sunny, and James to help me out. The booth was so busy this year. I'd have died if I were there alone. I actually got pretty sick on Sunday during the show because I was so hungry lol. Overall, I really had a lot of fun. I hope my friends also had a lot of fun there as well ^^. Also, Thank you, James, for some of the pics that I stole from you :p.
The crew: Sunny, me, and Randy. Thank you James for working
at the booth while I stole these two out for pics.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Pancakes & Arcade

I went to Wonder Con earlier this year as a dealer and asked a friend, Randy, to help me watch over the booth. We were going to grab breakfast in Anaheim, and one place caught our attention. Unfortunately, the line was way too long and I was running late to my booth. We ended up missing it and got Jack in the box instead T_T. Randy has been wanting to go back, so along with Mitsu, we decided to finally go to try it today. Behold the "The Original Pancake House"! The line was still almost an hour long, but it was so worth it. The pancakes were fluffy. The eggs were tasty. The german pancake was really cool. yum yum. That's how the day started.
German Pancake looks cool, don't they?




Then we went to check out "Round 1" Game center in City of Industry and ended up pretty much spending the whole day there. Randy won almost every game. I think he was really in his element there lol. We also played Pingpong. He beat us in Pingpong too, but I was just getting better when the time was up >:( boo! I wanted to win a Rilakkuma, but didn't want to waste money on trying to win it because it's probably cheaper to just buy it outside. I didn't want to get sucked in to the whole scheme but it was so tempting! I really like Taiko No Tatsujin and Smart Smacker ^^.
Taiko No Tatsujin