Monday 8 February 2016

DemonCon 11... first Con of the year.

It's become a bit of a tradition that Accent UK start their convention season with a trip down south, and via a number of motorways end up in Maidstone for the Demon Con event run by the local Grinning Demon store.
It's a small event when compared to the MCMs and SuperCons but it is great fun and actually we do OK sales-wise too.
This year, as with previous years, me and Gary Crutchley were the Accent UK team, which we like to call the A-Team. Armed with a good selection of stock, including the newly printed Tales Of WesterNoir #2, we were set up by 10.30 and had time to wander around the event before the doors opened to a decent sized crowd at 11am.
We took the customized Lego with us again as this tends to interest the kids but left the Standees at home as the table was quite busy and last year were forever knocking them over.
The were actually very few points in the day when we had nobody in front of the stall. It would be interesting to know how the percentage of 'idle' time at this show compared with the MCMs, I think favourably would be the answer.
One young lad picked up a copy of Stephenson's Robot only to come dashing back less than 10 minutes later for issue 2. He admitted that he hadn't finished reading issue 1 yet but said that he loved the artwork and didn't want to miss getting the next comic, which is all you can ask really in terms of feedback.
WesterNoir continues to sell really well. The sketchpacks of 'Season 1' flew off the table but we also had a number of customers returning for more after picking up some issues last year.
We'd almost hit last years total by lunch time and sales continued into the afternoon.
I also caught up with someone who had been so inspired by our discussion over my customized Lego figures last year, and his superpower that enables him to tell which figure is in which MiniFig bag, that he had his own stall and now sell Lego MiniFigs. I picked up a couple for future modification.
I had time to catch up with Dean Beattie who does a great comic called Random Trials (and the Con poster above) and share views on the comic book convention scene, and then it was time to stop.
We had a really great day.
We sold a good number of books.
We talked about our books with a lot of the people of Kent.
We talked Lego and had fun with families trying to link figure with comic book.
We talked SteamPunk (and the new conventions in Kent (find out more by emailing GreatKentSpectations@hotmail.co.uk)).
We even had time for Earl Grey Tea and a toasted sandwich.
See you all again next year.

9 comments:

  1. Well done chaps, sounds like you had a great day and certainly had great sales, not sure about that 'A-Team' tag though 😉

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  3. Gary fancies himself a bit of a Hannibal Smith methinks .. I just can't work out which one I am.

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  4. At least he's not Hannibal Lecter!

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  5. Yep .. it could have been worse. The cigar smoke got a bit much though after 3 hours in the car...

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  6. Kind a miffed I didn't get the Lobster thermidor I was promised fer dinner...Had to settle for Fish and Chips (which, if I'm honest was very tasty)

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  7. It's difficult to get Lobster Thermidor in motorway services I'm afraid ... maybe we should write a letter of complaint :o)

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  8. Bet Mr West still got his Earl Grey tea though...

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