Awesome Con was not just a place to practice your Jedi powers and meet such celebrities as William “Captain Kirk” Shatner, WWE champion Seth Rollins and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle co-creator Kevin Eastman.
The convention, which returned to the District last week, was a business opportunity for a niche market of entrepreneurs, offering immediate and invaluable exposure to the potential customer base.
The three-day cultural event generated $4.6 million dollars in sales by locals and nonlocals last year, a trend which shows no sign of slowing down. This year’s convention featured over 600 exhibitors and artists, all of whom seeking to carve out a piece of the convention market.
In the hours before the main floor of the expansive exhibit hall opened, the bare black tables were transformed into a vibrant bazaar over the course of only a couple of hours. A few of the vendors spoke with The Washington Times about their experience in the “con” business.
Jordan Ellis runs a clothing company called “Jordanden,” which sells “geeky” clothing for adults and children, out of her studio apartment in Brooklyn. And even if she didn’t close most of her sales on the exhibition floor, conventions like Awesome Con are the driving force in her marketing strategy.
Only attending “seven or eight” conventions a year, Ms. Ellis conducts does most of her business online, but the face-to-face interactions and visibility made possible by conventions are a huge boost. “For total sales, I sell more online, but this is where I meet people and make connections,” she said. “My online sales are driven by the conventions.”
Ms. Ellis got the idea for her business about three years ago as she was working as a nanny in Brooklyn.
“I was bored while I was nannying, so I started making stuff for kids,” she explained, gesturing to a section of her booth featuring children’s clothing and cloth bandoliers meant to hold crayons. “And then I wanted to wear it too, so I started making stuff for adults.” She also said that the best parts of her job were “being creative and getting to be a nerd forever.”
Conventions can also be a springboard for fledgling companies seeking to grow with a little exposure. Jon Riley, owner of White Tree Chainmail, a company that makes “geeky chain-mail paraphernalia, just got into the “con business” over a year ago.
“I’ve been trying to hit the con circuit around the D.C. area and had some reasonable success,” said Mr. Riley. “Most of my business is done at conventions.”
Mr. Riley handcrafts his chain-mail products. It can sometimes take up to 21 hours of work for a single piece costing up to $250, an effort he calls “a labor of love.”
While some exhibitors hope that the exposure offered by the convention will boost their outside sales, some companies’ business rests entirely on the convention circuit itself.
Flipside Creations is a “wearable art and oddities” company. Over a table containing everything from silver necklaces to taxidermied ducklings, owner Tara Rosenberg explained that she and her associate generate 100 percent of their revenue at events like Awesome Con. “We also do tattoo convention and horror conventions,” she said. “We only do our marketing online, but all the sales basically just come from doing shows.”
There’s a distinct learning curve in working the convention circuit full-time, according to Ms. Rosenberg. “It took a couple years to figure out what works,” she explained. “We don’t do the craft shows anymore. We started out doing the jewelry and then moved over into the oddities. Now, even if someone doesn’t want the oddities, they draw [customers] over and then they check out the jewelry. Either way, it brings people to the booth.”
Larger brick-and-mortar operations also take part in the event. Zipcar, Megabus, Books-a-Million and Sprint also had booths on the floor, some giving away promotional gear.
And the money spent on Awesome Con wasn’t just at its booths and tables. Looking out across the Washington Convention Center, one sees an ocean of people in costumes of superheroes, video-game characters, Jedis, and every previous incarnation of the main character from the BBC series “Doctor Who.” One “cosplayer” dressed in a period World War II costume remarked, “I usually just go online and get something for about $40, but there are people here who will easily spend over $200.”
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