Aniville – Animenext 2009 Part 1

Well the gang at Aniville came back from AnimeNEXT with a lot of stories and a lot of thoughts. So in this issue we will go over a lot of the good and the bad of everything that happened.

Aniville’s return to AnimeNEXT was a lot different then years past. We were actually attendees not merchants. For the first time in a long time at an anime convention I had to wait in line to purchase a badge. Which I have no problem with. I actually had fun cause it wasn’t something that I do to often.

Now your saying to yourself why were the members of Aniville waiting in line and not had a booth? Well after sending my packet in and not hearing anything back about my dealers packet. I ended up not having a table cause they were “sold out”. The only reason I found out was about 2 weeks before the con I contacted them cause my check wasn’t deposited in their account and I was starting to get worried that I wasn’t going to have a booth.  I don’t have heat with AN cause I know how hard it is to run an event like this and I give them credit. What I do have to mention is after talking to a few “friends” at the venue of the event they added another dealer or two in the dealers room on the day of the event.

Overall the Dealers room was very bland in my opinion and there was also merchants there that I thought shouldn’t be there. One was a stuffed animal dealer which really didn’t have much Japanese or anime oriented. The other is FYE. Why would FYE who has multiple stores in the area be purchasing a table and selling their DVDs for high marked up prices at a convention. In my opinion you go to a convention to get deals not spend high marked up retail prices.

Oh another piece of advice for some of the merchants. If you are selling a 1 color black shirt for $25 and it is not a mainstream market piece please rethink your pricing. Your really raping the fans. I sell shirts don’t get me wrong and I know how much it costs to make the shirt and you want to make a good amount of profit but $25 for a shirt that is not from the company that made the anime/manga is outrageous. A 1 Color on black shirt at most costs $10 a shirt a 150% markup is a lot. But then again I think this is why I sell out of my shirts a lot.