Vendor registration dates

[Mythicalfair]

I know in the past we would get a heads up on when vendor registration would open. Do we have a rough idea? Thanks!

[pulsedemon]

I'll notify everyone by email like normal. This year has presented us with a lot of extra things to work out, so it's delayed everything even longer than usual. 'Soon' is the best I can offer right now, which I know isn't super helpful.

If you or anyone else interested hasn't already contacted us through the email contact form this is probably a fine time to do so.

I plan to also grab email addresses for anyone that was in the room last year (barring anyone we've specifically told is not welcome back), but it's never a bad idea to use the contact form. Thanks!

[allaboutrecords]

Can I just ask you why don't you just put that space is full on the website or in emails so people don't wait for your email/link? I literally clicked the link the minute you emailed it and it was already full. This is the 3rd year this has happened to me, I just don't understand why you give people hope of getting a spot when there isn't any open booths.

[pulsedemon]

Hi, Russ. We've been over this quite a bit by email already. To restate, there is way more demand than there is supply, unfortunately. As far as why you didn't see my message until the room was already full, again, my best guess is maybe email server response/refresh speed. There were booths available when I sent out the link (though I didn't count them, as you'd asked in your email) so if you didn't see the message until after everything filled up, that's why I'm thinking it might have more to do with your email provider than anything. As history shows you, the room fills up very quickly.

I understand your frustration, but again, there is simply way more demand than supply.

[4tunate]

you know what really sucks, is when there is no love or support to the people that supported your con from the start. Already got multiple text from other dealers not getting in. Crazy to think that some vendors helped start this show, and now will be doing a different show. Its kind of like going to a gym or anything else you have had a membership to, and then one day out of nowhere they tell you that you are not allowed in. From what I have heard, anime Iowa just did the same thing. They actually wanted to "spice things up", so they actually kicked out most of the vendors that were that last year to get all new ones, even though some dealers have been there and helped them start over 20 years ago. Wonder how many more big cons have to be hated by vendors, staff and fans before they get the idea. Take otakon for example. lol Crazy to think that big name vendors with unique product will be missing out of a lot of shows this year due to stuff like this. I guess as long as the room is full and you sell tickets, nothing else matters right?

[pulsedemon]

Except this isn't a gym. This is a marketplace where there's a limited amount of space and more demand than supply. There's no concerted effort to 'spice things up' by refusing long-standing relationships. I can't speak to anything Anime Iowa does. I don't know anyone that works on that show and by your own post, it's hearsay at best.

There is literally nothing that would make my life easier in working on this event than to sell exactly the same room at the end of every show. Yet that isn't what's happening. In this exact thread, we've got a post from someone that's trying to get in but can't and another post from someone that appears to have been involved for a while (though I don't get any hits searching my inboxes for the email address connected to your account) and couldn't get space. It's fully obvious I can't please everyone. I wish I could make everyone happy, but that's likely not possible, either. I could fit more people in by imposing hard and strict booth space caps, but that makes the show not worth attending for a lot of people. I could raise the price really dramatically, but then nobody likes that (but it would reduce demand).

If you hadn't used an email address that I'm completely unfamiliar with, I could potentially get a bit more context to understand your situation better. You could PM me if you don't want to say publicly, though you have me at a disadvantage here as my name is on every post I make.

[allaboutrecords]

you know what really sucks, is when there is no love or support to the people that supported your con from the start. Already got multiple text from other dealers not getting in. Crazy to think that some vendors helped start this show, and now will be doing a different show. Its kind of like going to a gym or anything else you have had a membership to, and then one day out of nowhere they tell you that you are not allowed in. From what I have heard, anime Iowa just did the same thing. They actually wanted to "spice things up", so they actually kicked out most of the vendors that were that last year to get all new ones, even though some dealers have been there and helped them start over 20 years ago. Wonder how many more big cons have to be hated by vendors, staff and fans before they get the idea. Take otakon for example. lol Crazy to think that big name vendors with unique product will be missing out of a lot of shows this year due to stuff like this. I guess as long as the room is full and you sell tickets, nothing else matters right?

This is the only convention I have ever seen that refuses to tell people ahead of time when booths will be available, but also contacts vendors beforehand. I have a friend that had space months ago.

All Im saying is stop lying to people, just post that its full or do it the fair way and tell people ahead of time when booths open like every other convention.
It looks extremely sketchy and bad on your part when you send out vague emails or ignore them completely then blame email servers for the link you send going right to a wait list.

This year you gave us a 1 hour window of when it would be posted, last year it was even more vague you said something like when I get home tonight whenever that is.

The con is less than a month away and the website still says keep checking this page for info...

[pulsedemon]

All I can do is repeat myself. When I sent you the link, there were spaces available. If you don't believe me, there is nothing I can do to convince you, short of meeting with you to show you my inbox. It's full of messages from our space reservation system about other people booking spaces. There were a lot of people interested, so the supply of booths ran out quickly, so it took about 4-ish minutes for the messages to turn into notifications about applications going to the waitlist.

I couldn't give a very firm projection far in advance about when everything would be ready as we were working around factors twofold - the floor plan couldn't be firm until we could get the facility to talk about how we can better accommodate more of the security theater they want so that more people can get into the building faster and we also had a higher level of interest from sponsors. I got the floor plan back from our general services contractor February 10. It took a few days to get everything adapted into the space registration system, then I sorted out sponsors, industry, local partners, etc. That started February 17. If your friend falls in one of those categories, then it's possible we spoke 'months ago', but I only had the link ready to send at that time. I sent it to you and everyone else that contacted me February 21.

I haven't had time yet to do the manual part of switching the 'status' of applications in our system to make everything show up on the site. I can work on that today. Yesterday all day was working on getting stuff ready to go in the program guide. The past several days I didn't have much time, working around my real job that I get paid for. I took Tuesday of last week (February 21) off work to get everything ready on my end (making sure my contact list was in good order and merging last year's exhibitor list) and get the link sent out to everyone that asked. I also activated the 'public' link [https://animeboston.com/forms/dealers_r ... istration/] at the same time.

I would like to think this is an explanation of what's going on, but with the way you're accusing me of 'lying', I can only expect you're going to read that as 'excuse' instead of 'explanation'.

To go back to the issue of email delivery speed, I'm not a computer scientist (I'm a life scientist), but it's a real thing that some providers are slower than others. I don't use MailChimp for anything, but this was a pretty clear presentation of exactly what I'm talking about. https://blog.mailchimp.com/delivery-speed-part-1/ It's a thing. Now, it's worth noting that in that blog post, they mention 95% of messages go out within 5 minutes. Again, I'm not using MailChimp, so it's maybe not 100% applicable, but if within 5 minutes is a potential window of time and it took about 4 minutes to fill the room, it becomes feasible that you may have received the message just as the last booths were filling up.

We use Google for handling our email and collaboration tools. As a non-profit, we get a good rate, so it's kind of a no-brainer. There's less routing to get to Gmail users than there is to get to you at the address you gave us. I get that it provides no solace to hear that you didn't have a chance to get space because other people got to it first. I wish I could accommodate everyone, but that isn't how it can happen, unfortunately.

[animosc]

Is it possible for vendors to register in person onsite (at AB) for cons in future years? I know that some other cons do this and I'm wondering if you offer this option.

[pulsedemon]

No. That would basically have me selling the exact same room every year. As this thread demonstrates, that's either exactly what someone wants (if they're in) or exactly what they don't want (if they're not in). I don't think it's what benefits the membership to just have the same exact room every year, either.

[Aurabolt]

This seems like a good thread to ask this type of general question:

If a Vendor wanted to reserve space elsewhere in the Hynes, would they be able to? For example let's say Best Buy expressed an interest in reserving a separate room during the con outside the dealer's room. Would they be able to do that or would they be required to use the Dealer's Room?

[pulsedemon]

I'm not even going to dance around it. That is entirely determined by how much money they want to spend. The show doesn't get cheaper to pull off every year.

With that said, there are additional things to consider if someone is going to sell stuff in another space. Any place we're allowing people to sell stuff becomes considered 'exhibit space' and things are handled by our General Services Contractor and not by the facility (like in the case of one of the meeting rooms elsewhere in the building). So like setting up tables and chairs is done by the GSC instead of the facility. I'm pretty sure it would also change how A/V would work, too, in that it becomes a different chapter of Teamsters that handles everything into and out of the room than the one that typically works with us on A/V, meaning a greater level of logistic planning required (more time when time=money). It changes what things cost, so that would go into our calculus.

Naturally, there's always going to be the consideration of effectively 'editorial approval', meaning we'd talk about it and decide if whatever's on offer is appealing enough to allow whatever's proposed. If you just wanted to give us a bunch of money for, as an example, reserving a spot for a wedding, that gives us a lot to have to consider, apart from the mission statement. If it would be something we'd basically all sign off on doing, we'd then have to first approach our facility rental contract to see if that's something we could do at all [subletting], then we'd have to consider the services that would be required, and of course we'd have to consider what we'd lose by agreeing to that kind of arrangement, not to mention other considerations like insurance and liability or whether this could potentially change other elements of existing policies that we also have to get, like workers' comp and auto insurance.

It's not a small consideration, to say the least. We'd likely be looking at a bunch of lawyer time in addition to whatever everything would already cost, for example. It likely wouldn't be something we could pull off with a month left (unless we were talking about an uncomfortably large amount of money lol).

None of us see cent one out of this show and the work we put into it, so if something allows us to improve things in measurable ways for everyone that's actually coming to enjoy what we're doing, that's a driving factor. If we only wanted to make money, the sad fact is that maybe it would be better to do a different kind of show. Have you seen how much it costs to get into like a dentist conference? That's also not the point of why we do the show in the first place. We all like these crazy Japanese cartoons, right? So for a weekend, we all enjoy them together.

[Aurabolt]

...So in short: Yes, but it would be REALLY complicated.

Even though I was pretty vague I am impressed by the detailed answer. Yes I am satisfied with your answer by the way ^_^

After seeing those to vendors vent (pun intended) I was wondering if there was any interest or if it would be too much of a slippery slope. Not just for the obvious reaosns but other vendors wanting their own space outside the Dealers' Room as a result. I guess I was sorta thinking if it were possible to offer another area in the Hynes--maybe unsold space in the Artist Alley--as an alternative location for vendors I guess.

[pulsedemon]

There's even more demand for space in the Alley. If the list of people interested in space in the Dealers' Room is maybe twice as long as the number of people that actually get space (basically where it's at), the Alley has a list of people maybe 4 or 5 times as long as the list of people that can get in.

There's also an element that none of this conversation addresses. The reason why the space is so valuable. I could add a whole lot more booths and create space for everyone. That means that many more people competing for essentially the same number of dollars coming through the door. That means everyone's take is smaller. That maybe makes the trip less appealing for more people and drives the vacancy rate up (or it basically creates vacancy). Another way to adjust things is to increase the price per booth or table to a much higher rate. That then means that fewer people are going to be interested since the barrier to 'profit' is that much higher. At the same time, again, that then reduces the appeal for people since that reduces their take-home. That's like basic market economics, right?

The way we budget for all of the exhibit space (Dealers' Room and Artists' Alley, primarily) is that it basically just barely covers itself, factoring in the cost of the halls and the GSC costs to set up the booths and tables. If we don't fill everything, we're probably losing money, but that hasn't ever happened, I think. There are the occasional no-shows, but there's not a lot that can be done there (apart from not inviting/allowing no-shows to return).

[Aurabolt]

Don't worry I get it.

I also think you should send every vendor who applied--those accepted and those declined--prettymuch what you told me. Like I found out when applied to do some panels in the last three years, it's not guaranteed. Past experience guarantees nothing at the end of the day though of course it helps. Like the two disgruntled vendors I made that assumption and got a reality check when some of my panel submissions were turned down.

The process is slightly different of course as in the case of panel submissions, the director of programming and panels has to factor several things and most of what she has to go on is the info provided by the applicants. In addition to that it's a roll of the dice: Slot this known applicant's panel or give that first-time applicant a chance? Give this new panelist the 90 minutes he's requesting for Saturday night or ask that experienced panelist if they can fill 30 minutes instead of 45?

I used to feel that level of entitlement to make a long story short. I get the phrase "time is money" but if they're that deadset on being at AB, maybe they they could cut a deal with the PRU and get a 3-day lease in a vacant retail unit. LOL.

[pulsedemon]

I'm not going to presume to tell someone how to run their business. I get what you're saying, but exhibitors at our show are at another show the previous week and another show the week after. You get to learn what works for you running in that kind of scene, especially for as long as some of them have been doing it. I just know what's worked for me here. It's never perfect for everyone. I wish it could be and everyone could be happy, but it just doesn't work that way, unfortunately.