Cosplay and conventions have always had a weird relationship. People love seeing the cosplayers but some cons and vendors do not. Some vendors, whether they are selling items, or they are artists or writers, (especially at comic book conventions) sometimes blame cosplayers for slow sales which gets conveyed to convention owners and it spirals downwards from there. As both a vendor and a comics writer I have seen firsthand where people could possibly have that argument… if they wanted to take accountability for their own lackluster work or work ethic.
With artists, writers, creatives etc., they’re excited about their work. They believe in themselves. They want recognition and that can come in the form of getting invited to have a table at a convention. But, they’re creatives. They usually aren’t salespeople or marketing experts so they go to these shows and sit there playing Nintendo waiting for people to buy all of their merch. They don’t engage their customers and so they don’t make sales. If they were invited as a guest then really no harm no foul except that ego blow, but if they paid for that table space, then now they just lost a large chunk of change.
The same thing goes for convention owners that bring in cosplay guests. If their show has celebrities no one wants to see or care about, and their ticket prices aren’t worth it, people are not gonna buy those tickets. That’s the fault of the planner and showrunner. More often than not though, blaming their guests is what the shows seem to be leaning towards. Not taking accountability for their own poor planning and then laying that on the shoulders of cosplay guests, smaller name artists and writers and vendors that actually are doing well at their show can sometimes be the go-to move for a con owner that has put their all into something and has lost their shirt for their lack of foresight. At some point that con owner was also a fan so they’d have to take a step back and look at it from those fan eyes again to ask themselves honestly, would I pay this much money for a convention of this caliber?
When a show is losing money or just desperate or just plain greedy, they look for the most bang for their buck. They look for a more cost effective “quantity over quality” solution and in doing so can sometimes overlook some facts that are either blaring in their faces or that they already know about and choose to ignore. This happened to us a couple of years ago with two conventions in Greenville and Charlotte, North Carolina. These were smaller one-day conventions and were decent enough and we did well at both of them for years. In Charlotte, at some point during the pandemic, rather than follow the guidelines the FDA and the government’s recommendations on large gatherings, they decided to put on a convention anyway. We chose not to do that show for our staff’s safety, and due to that they used a man we’ll call Ron, who (according to them) “does everything The Variant does” including running their cosplay contest, providing Free Professional Cosplay Photography to all their attendees and marketing their shows on social media. I mean that’s what we do right?
The problem is that Ron has a crappy reputation in the community, with instances of working with under-age girls in his fan films, bullying, misconduct, alleged sexual harassment and a laundry list of items that were brought to our (and the con’s) attention by some of the Charlotte area cosplayers we had worked with in the past and a few we hadn’t including the previous cosplay contest staff of that convention and a few vendors and artists. He is also nowhere near a professional photographer and his reputation and lack of knowledge of the medium severely limited his ability to “do what The Variant does”. We were offered our same (previously free) hallway space at a reduced rate but politely declined.
During this transition, a few female cosplayers came forward on their social media and told their stories publicly but they were threatened by him to be sued which, in of itself, is a fallacy. Let’s talk legal 101 for just a second. If you say something about someone that is untrue, you can be sued but it would have to be proven that you lost money because of it and for it to be worth it, at least be able to prove you lost as much as your lawyer cost you. That is called libel or slander, depending on if it’s in writing or spoken. If you say something that IS true, no legal recourse can be brought against you. Maybe a defamation claim can possibly be made but again, according to our lawyers, the cost would outweigh the reward and people would have to prove you cost them a large amount of money in order for anyone to get a large amount of money as restitution or to just cover their legal fees with no actual guarantee of winning.
Anyway, shortly thereafter we were contacted by another convention we worked with in Greenville who also brought Ron in and told us he would now be taking over the cosplay contest there too. While they still wanted our photo booth they began transitioning things to Ron because at the end of the day, the booth space they were giving us for free was affecting their bottom line. We fulfilled our obligation to that show and then chose not to do it again considering the safety concerns.
So we have these conventions looking to get rid of the larger free space they were giving us in order to sell that vendor space to paying vendors. They give a much smaller space to people like Ron who use a smaller footprint because they don’t adhere to safety standards and utilize cheap and janky green screen effects instead of understanding how lighting works and taking dynamic photographs with little to no back-end editing needed.
When the conventions start blaming companies like ours and cosplayers for their bottom line being terrible and looking for cheaper “less-than” options, that’s when we choose to move on. When the conventions just start looking at their bottom lines instead of the safety and well-being of their attendees, the attendees will also start looking for other safer conventions to go to. When they do, more often than not, we’ll be there waiting for them.
Stay tuned for more information on this topic in this three-part expose on the comics and convention scene we currently work in along with other topics pertaining to your safety at cons.
Till next time, have fun and stay safe out there!!!
