First Artist Alley event recap!

So... I survived tabling!!!

Very grateful to anyone who passed by, took a look, said hi, and bought stuff... thank you very much!!!

My biggest thank you for my friend who helped me greet everyone because I would have never dared to do so at all. I'm very very humbled 🙏

I didn't dare to have any sales goal because I'm practically a newbie in such event. Never did I expect to receive so many valuable tips on selling and marketing from random passerby.

Forever grateful for their generous advice 🙏

I was able to pass some business cards and free postcards, though my friend did a huge part in beckoning and greeting the passerby. I gained a little bit courage to wave and smile, but perhaps, it was a baby step for me. The sales I made gave me courage, that my art has value.

How was it actually? It was a super cool experience, I can say!

I wanted to post this a day or two after the event, but I was so tired and didn't feel well physically, so I was advised total physical rest for the week after the event. I thought the timing was good: I've been working in the past few months, that an uninterrupted break was due. I grabbed some books I got recently which I haven't got the time to read. I enjoyed it so much!!

Here is my table!

I took a bit more than hour to build this. Longer that I wanted it to be, and it ended up quite tall, I struggled to place the prints on the highest point. I also wrote the price tags last minute. A mistake I really wanted to fix for future tabling events.

Favorite corner hehe, because freebies! I think it attracted quite some people and started some conversations. The live sketch request board probably did the heavy lifting. It was made last-minute, and surprisingly attracted several buyers. 🥹

It's been a while so what I can remember started to be hazy... I can make a bulleted list of the highlights of what happened, as it's easier for me to tread my memory regarding the event in such form!

• First of all, I did 0 marketing. No social media post except the catalogue. I really didn't have the time to do anything meaningful... Also, the events' news overall was posted in Insta but I don't feel like posting my art there anymore (Meta's terms give me the ick...) so I've only been logging in on my account only to reply messages and small interactions. Since I only log in with my browser I can't do the fancy stuff like posting stories, etc. as well.
• Took so long to build the grid. Part of the reasons was that it was my first time doing it on a proper table – the rehearsal I did at home was on a floor and some boxes lol – but also the grids were pretty tough, they need training lol.
• Missed the first half an hour wave of visitors because we were still building the grid... 💦 >_> My helper did his best, but since it was both our first time, we took a long time. I didn't stress this much, but I wondered if we missed the window of greeting early bird visitors with full energy.
• It was a huge mess behind the table... I can't describe how much of a pigsty it was. I had a hard time finding what I needed from the pile. There is a huge reorganisation needed to store all my merchs. The artists next to me were incredibly neat, I'm pretty sure they were veterans. I couldn't sit straight with the pile of boxes and stuff under my table for the entire 10 hours. My back suffered. :(
• Felt like I should have talked with more people, hyping them about my creations with my helper who most of the time was in front of my table, doing his best to greet people and introduce my stuff to them. But if I did so, no-one would be behind the table watching the pile of our merchs and getting ready to fetch stuff whenever it's needed, so I decided to stay behind the table while my friend did the hyping. Also, I am nowhere near charismatic at all – it's a personal thing. I'm much happier behind the scenes, working on my stuff.
• I was nervous at the thought of opening live sketch requests, even for as low as 15€. My helper kept pushing and suggesting me to do it. It's just simple pencil sketch of any request. But I hadn't done a sign. A small inspiration at the spout of the moment allowed me to made one. I thought sketching the sign could grab the attention of passerby to come and look at my table, even when they would end up just grabbing freebies – I'm totally fine with that. I'm glad he encouraged me. Unexpectedly, I managed to sell a few sketches haha. Yay. Like, I could've done much better if I were to be in a much calmer situation but I guess the sketches had to be like that. I hope the requesters were happy with them... 🥲
• There was no downtime. Brought many snacks but I was only able to get a few bites of grapes and cookies. That's all we could eat in the entire 10 hours. I brewed tea, so at least we could sip a bit of it throughout the day. The artist next to me told me that it was a particularly crowded event. In a way, I consider this super lucky that my first tabling event was really crowded.
• People's comments when arriving to my booth can be summarised as the following:
  • "Very cute and soft!!!!! 🥺" (OMG, thank you...)
  • "I don't know any of these characters." (they are my characters...)
  • "Aaw... 🥺🥺" (I was too shy to react I just 🥺🫶)
  • "What is this?" (pointing at the free VN postcards) – probably thinking it wasn't free. I told them it's free to take and they were surprised they could take it. I felt proud at that moment heheh >:3
  • "Oh my... Thank you... 🥺🥺🥺 *whimper*" (from receiving the live sketch request I did. She was too sweet... I could've done much better, I'm sorry...)
• As my main goal was market study, I(we) was able to talk to so many people to get an idea of what people are looking for in art markets. Credit to my helper for gathering some insights from the passerby.

While my helper chatted with passerby, I doodled... a lot of postcards... because... I didn't know what to do...

Actual original doodles! I tried to sell them for 10€ - 15€. They didn't sell, but that's okay! I want to scan them at home at least!

Kitty cheered me up!

Sad :( things

While it was a nice first art market event I had, one of my goals beside market study was to sell calendars... but they didn't sell well. I squeezed my brain hard, trying to figure out the cause. I thought it would sell like hotcakes, it's the season for that! But oh well... 😔

Still, the loss was a valuable lesson. I suspect these are the reasons:

• High price. I've been selling calendars for around 15€ to 18€ in the past five years. Printing price increased significantly, so I decided to add some extra pages and bumped the price to 20€ (so it's just a single bill haha). Didn't work, it seems... 😔
• People don't really use calendars nowadays... I guess? Since the first time I made calendar in 2020, I made it for myself, and I'm super grateful that some patrons/acquaintances got to like them, so I was very motivated to keep making it. :) I also sometimes sold a few calendars here and there, and with a few sales somehow I convinced myself that people still use wall calendars in their houses. It seems that most people are doing things digitally now? I love having one in my kitchen, just to write down some house chores and the like. It's very fun, and looking back at all of my previous calendars and the doodles give me the nostalgia. I think it's a very precious feeling I want many others to feel as well. A little supplement in the world that rapidly grows digital as time goes by.
• OC art. One thing I noticed in Aniaki (in relation to all kinds of merch); is that fanart does better than OC art by a lot. If they don't know the characters, they won't bother spending so much on it. Pippa isn't that well known for anyone to spend that much on a merch they don't even use. 😛

In all honesty, this made me panic haha because:

• It was the most pricey merch I made. I did break even, so money isn't the problem. But having a pile of unused ones at home is kind of heart breaking...
• It has time limited value. I can't convince its value past the year it applies to. It's one merch that has expiry date... Ooor, I'll reuse it in 2037 hahahah.

One thing I wish I did differently was how I(we) approached anyone who took an interest. I wish I wasn't this shy, so I could greet anyone and confidently chatted with them. I wanted to say "THANK YOU!" from the bottom of my heart for anyone for just taking a look at my table. Your time and attention is very precious. 🥺🙏

Also, my helper did his best to greet anyone who came closer to us. He chatted with a few visitors who were so, so kind, and gave him some pointers on how to approach passerby and sell things. He did his best in hyping my works (and I'm forever grateful that he did), even when sometimes we might sound a bit awkward but we're learning our best! 🙏 It was also his first time doing this, so I'm super grateful for his time and help.

As a matter of fact, we are both awkward and introverted people haha. I'm even worse: super shy and have very low volume voice – my public speaking skill is at zero haha so I apologized if we looked/sounded out of place. This event took a lot for us, and we were still learning how to navigate in this kind of events.

For the event itself: As Aniaki – given the name – is anime oriented, most visitors are looking for fanmerchs. I honestly felt out of place with my merch because I only had around 5% of fanmerch in comparison of OC merch. I have no idea of the current trends (VTubers? Uma? Gacha games? Latest anime? I know none of those...) I do think the event itself is really cool and it was fun watching cosplayers walked around, but perhaps if I want to join again, I shall prepare more fanmerch in advance. 🤔 Perhaps fanmerch of games or shows I like, which if anyone ever recognises them, it would feel like a huge jackpot hahah.

Nice :D things

• The ones who chatted and gave us a lot of incredibly insightful pointers about how to sell things. Advice in displaying merch, pricing, greeting passerby, and more. Basically, it's the street-knowledge of selling and tabling! In all of my time browsing forum posts about tabling, backtracking on forum posts about artists' experiences, watching countless YouTube videos of artists tabling – there are more, non-artist insights that are really really useful! For me, gaining this knowledge in this Aniaki was more of a huge win than anything! ⭐ It's just too valuable 🥹 Thank you, kind people!
• The ones who bought stuff from me... Thank you so much. I didn't even dare to dream to sell more than a couple of stickers, which are mostly OCs, but for anyone who were interested in them... I can't express my gratitude. I wanted to shove freebies for you all, but that would've been so unfair, I shall not do that.
• The ones who requested live sketches... Thank you for the opportunity, for letting me draw for you. I started it with "this is just like commissions" in my mind, but I realized: that pencil on paper doesn't have an undo button. There's no rotate tool. For a moment, I felt like I was a fraud (what am I thinking? I can't draw on paper... I can't put a price on these...) but the positive reactions to what I made quickly invalidated that impostor thoughts. Thank you... 🙏
• Meeting other artists. I could barely leave my table because of the crowds, so unfortunately I wasn't able to greet others this time :( but I was able to chat with a couple of other artists, and they're really kind and sweet.
• I dreaded going to public, but I guess it was fine in the end. All went okay.

Learnt things

• Learn more about the event's nature and adapt. Anime-oriented events would benefit more with more fanmerch.
• Arrive even earlier than the scheduled time. I learnt that I take so long in building grids, I need more start-time than anyone.
• Better merch organisation. Boxes are probably not the best for flat stuff...
• Price tags. I handwrote mine last-minute because I purely forgot and thought it was not a big deal. I didn't like the price tags I made... I should have been more prepared. :( Printed price tags would be the easiest way.
• Good rest. The event needed so much physical energy, that a good rest prior to the event day is very important. (I didn't have this because I constantly worried about what I missed haha...)
• Learn to speak more, I guess? I probably need to speak in front of the mirror for hours, my charisma skill is basically at 0 LOL. This time, my helper helped me cover that part of the work, but eventually I need to learn about it too. A lot of factors contributed to me not being able to speak much. Confidence and bravery are the things I will learn to slowly build.
• Lastly, I learnt that tabling is very hard and all artists who do it regularly are incredibly powerful people. I'm in a limbo now whether I actually like doing it or not haha >_>;; but it's an incredibly fulfilling experience. Perhaps, I can try it again some time in the future. Not in near time, though, at least.

Here are some Insta posts of people who tagged me! Thank you so much uwa... 🥹🥹🥹 Sorry I can't do much with these posts because I don't have the app:

And here is what I got! It's by reika.makes.flowers:

Looking at my desk, what I've been buying in artist alleys are crocheted plushies. I have great weakness to little creatures, I always want to take them home... 🧸💕