December Designs, 2023 Plans & Seattle Love

Hi Everyone!

Happy December to you all! A lot has been going on this past month, so I apologize that I hadn't posted sooner (despite actually having half of this post written two weeks ago).

For those of you interested, I wanted to share how the last month of events has been for us as I know some of you creative types might have an interest in selling your own products IRL, as well as attendees who might sometimes feel FOMO when they don't get to go to a hyped event. Let me just say this: don't trust all the pics you see on social media—so much of what you see is a single moment of heavy foot traffic to make you feel like everyone but you was there when in fact it was a really slow event. So anyway, if this is something that interests you, read on, otherwise, feel free to scroll on for news about pre-orders, upcoming plans and production updates!

EVENT UPDATES

AX Chibi
Unfortunately, AX Chibi was not at all what we had hoped for (or really what the reps promised). They told us that it would be around 8k attendees every day, but what they didn’t say was they were only selling weekend passes, so that’s potentially 8k attendees at max if everyone showed up on the same day. In reality, it felt slower than some of the local Seattle art and craft markets we do and sales were definitely less than that which as a result, that meant this was the first time we’ve ever gone negative to do an event. 😰

The only saving grace of doing this event is that while walking around, Taka was able to connect with some LA folks, make some new friends and possible opportunities for his tattooing, as well as for us to collaborate with a couple LA brands. It was really endearing because to be honest, Taka hasn’t really made friends in the US—partly because he’s a hermit who’d rather chill at home, but partly because there aren’t really people he vibes with in the NW. While Taka is himself pretty straight-laced, straight-edge and a pretty reserved person unless you can joke with him in his weird Japanese humor way, he doesn't really make many friends in the US. You have to remember he has mostly been around wild and unsavory types back in Japan, minus a few of his normie childhood friends. Most of the people he was around in Japan were um… questionable, but also more interesting. So Taka likes to be around I guess you could say, colorful characters as he’s a bit odd and colorful himself. Which I totally get, too. Even though I was an almost always Straight A student, I also always gravitated towards the stoners, skaters, goth/punk and foreigners in school, as they were honestly more interesting. 😂🤷🏻‍♀️ So for all the bad that was AX Chibi, I was really happy for Taka to make some connections with some guys he could bro out with 😂

DesignerCon
On a personal level, I really enjoyed this event because everyone brought their A-Game as far as booth set ups go, whether they were a bigger or smaller brand. From my understanding from other creator friends & vendors, however, it was slower than previous years. I think it was partly because they apparently had double the amount of vendors than previous years and the halls were really big so it never felt crowded. Even if the numbers were equal, a crowded hall can create a sense of urgency to buy for customers out of, you guessed it, FOMO. Without FOMO, people don't feel as much of an urge to buy, and while it's not a tactic I particularly like in marketing, it certainly works.

As far as the attendees go, I definitely preferred this crowd to AX Chibi because at AX Chibi almost no one even wanted to come and chat at your booth unless they were going to buy something. I know that sounds strange to say since selling should be the primary goal, but for me, it actually means a lot when we can have meaningful interactions even if people don't buy from you. I've made some IRL friends (both vendors and customers) from tabling and honestly, if you're not going to enjoy the atmosphere and make connections in person, why not just shop online??

Sales-wise, DesignerCon was still kinda a bust, since after car rental, flight, hotel and food, my profit was around $125? But hey, at least I didn't go full-on negative like we did at AX Chibi. 😂

I don’t think I’d table this event again unless we get a bigger push on our original characters since original art is king at this event, but I would definitely go back just to check out the event because it had so many killer booth set ups and incredible art.

I'd also go back because I really liked Anaheim! For my entire life I thought all Anaheim had to offer was Disneyland, but excuse me, why did no one ever tell me there's a lot of great eats & a cute downtown to check out?! In fact, Taka and I are going to head back to Anaheim in January since one of the friends he made at AX Chibi invited us to be part of their Lunar New Year event. I wouldn't have probably agreed to do it had it been the same weekend as Seattle's Lunar New Year event, or if it was in LA proper, but it turned out the event is in Anaheim which I already told Taka I wanted to go back as a tourist. This event will be a lot less pressure for us to make money at and I'm not seeing it as a work trip, but a vacation where we just might happen to make back a little money on our flights or hotel.

So all in all, our California excursions weren't a total bust, despite being a financial burden on us. My takeaway was new friendships/connections, a chance to explore down the road, and some inspo for the future of Shishido Creative's set ups! Now, I won’t lie and say our booth set up is amazing, because it’s not. It works for me to be able to show all our wares, but it's certainly not my vision of what I'd like our booth to look like.

Taka hasn't been boothing with me very often anymore since business has been picking up for him tattoo-wise, so most the time I'm tabling alone. And quite frankly, I don't have the patience or will power to create a display that's heavy (it would likely be a lot of wood to make it more Japanese traditional) or time to set up and tear down being 2-3 hours.

Though this does bring us into the territory of 2023 goals:

Targeted Ads: In October, Taka took a risk on Google ad-spending for his business and it has more than paid off. Seeing the success he's been having booking a new consultation nearly every 2 weeks, and of course every single consultation leading into tattoos because Taka's work really is amazing, has definitely made me think that ads might be the way to go for marketing in 2023. I consider tabling as part of advertising, but the truth is, most people take our business card and then never follow us or purchase anything later. And that's fine, but maybe I don't need to be killing anymore trees to pass out a business card no one uses? For example, if I spent as much on online marketing as I did to do the events we did in California (probably like 4-5k for both), I would likely have a ridiculously higher return for my efforts without ever having to leave the house (except hopefully to drop off tons of online orders). So if y'all start to see some ads pop up on your feeds or google, you'll know what's up! :p

Do Less Markets: I'll still be tabling at events, but I'm going to focus on doing the events I know we do well at and not just jump at every opportunity to table. 2022 has been a year of experimenting for me with definite ups and downs. And even if you do a market once and have a good/bad time, it doesn't mean for sure it will be the same next time. That said, I have a pretty good idea what works and doesn't for us and I'd rather spend the weekends that I would have been tabling, relaxing at home and focusing on more content creation and believe me, I'm just filled with so many ideas and plans for 2023 including more traditional art of my own!

Possible Storefront: We really didn't try to find another storefront after the one we really wanted in the tail-end of 2021 didn't pan out. By the way, that location is still empty!! Taka and I still really want our own storefront, but the biggest issue we have had is finding a good spot that isn't heavy on break-ins and theft and isn't too big or too out of the way or too spendy. Haha I know, it's a lot to ask. >_< But we'll be keeping our eyes peeled to try and find it more aggressively than we did last year. We kind of figure that as much money we pay to do events each month we probably could afford the costs of a permanent storefront. Although you can't expect to make a ton of money each day when you have a retail spot, it's a lot less physically taxing to not have to set up and tear down, and we can really focus on making our shop everything we envision.

Seattle Events
I got off-topic a little with goals as this ties into more of my reviews of the events we've tabled at this past month. I think if there’s anything that the past two months of exploring markets in California and visiting Austin to potentially move there, it’s at least solidified for us that Seattle is where we need to be.

Despite Seattle actually being kinda a smaller major city, I've really come to appreciate the community here that is constantly supportive of their local creatives, whether it's as a returning customer or their first time seeing your work. I know people like to say there’s a “Seattle Freeze” but I definitely feel like customers here are a lot more engaging and excited. My sales in both the past two weekends were much better than either California show and I even got to sleep in my own bed each night! 😝

To be fair, I think the attendance at the California events is likely due to the fact that all y’all California folk have a ton of amazing events to go to, so even if you can’t make it to one event, you know another will be just around the corner the next weekend or so. Seattle still doesn’t have too many intense or amazing events. I’d say comparatively the events here are good, but not like “OMG YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!” And yet the amount of support our community gives to each other is really beautiful whether it’s a large or small event.

UPCOMING DESIGNS
I’m working on finalizing the design for Princess Jpter & Vns—apologies for not releasing a Princess last month. Time just zipped by so quickly with so much travel, event prep, getting pin club orders out the door, as well as Black Friday orders. But unless there’s any objection (holidays and all) I will release two Princess designs this month and will have preorders for them up soon. This time around I’m going to lower the LE to 75 instead of 100 as Mercury had a little less preorders than I expected and I don’t want to be left sitting on these larger pins. We still had a lot of interest for Mercury, and I had a higher LE because I wanted to make sure everyone who wants them could get them, but I think I have a good idea how many people plan to collect these larger pins, so we aren’t left with too many extra, but enough for a few people to snag if they want to wait for in-hands. If these were publicly available I'd keep the LE higher, but since it's still exclusive and not something I can sell outside of the pin club, I want to make sure I can sell out.

Besides the Princess Preorders I’m also working this week on sketching and finalizing an entire Lunar New Year Collection. I know I do an annual collection of the LNY animals with other maker friends, but no one has mentioned it in our group this year and quite frankly I’d like to have an entire collection as I get folks at events asking for other animals for themselves or to gift and I’d love to be able to offer a full collection.

PRODUCTION UPDATES
For the latest preorders I put into production, it’s moving pretty quickly and preorders for the Parol should be in this week (I hope) which I requested because I’m doing another Filipino Holiday Palengke on Dec 10th. 🎉 Below are the photo updates so far:

I’m using my backup manu for these because they’re a bit quicker than my usual manu. They’re a little more spendy than my usual manu, but I also get less flawed pins. Why don’t I make them my main manu? The primary reason is because my rep at this other company is always worried that the amount of detail our pins like the Pretty Winkers have is impossible and so tries to make us simplify stuff or insist we need to make designs larger. There’s nothing wrong with them being cautious and caring about the quality, I do appreciate their honesty of being concerned. However, years of working with our main manu, I’m aware that our designs are not impossible.

Though for more simple designs I’m going to work with my secondary manu more as they’re more reliable time-wise. My main manu’s wife just had a child and while I’m really happy for them, their communication has been really slow recently and despite having finished Q. Selene and Queen B over a month ago, they’ve yet to send them out. I did finally manage to get photos this morning of what’s done and hopefully shipping out this week or next:

It looks like S.Healer & Princess Mrcry (manga variant anyway) are just waiting on screen print!

Ok, y'all put up with enough rambling for one day! I should have more updates soon regarding some sketches for LNY collection, a few Filipinx designs and details about the beginning of our Ghibli Pretty Winkers as well as the Original designs theme. Thank you all as always for being amazing and we really hope you have a wonderful final month of 2022.

- Mandy & Taka