Babscon 2015- A Vendor's Perspective



Babscon overall was a bit of a drunken blur- but instead of waking up afterwards mugged and who knows what else, my wallet was packed with twenties and there was a smile that wouldn't leave my face until the jetlag set in. I'm not going to lie, I am going to spend the majority of this article jerking Babscon off, because the complaints are far and few in between. But hey, if you can stand it long enough I've managed to sneak in some secret stripper pics from the /mlp/ party if you can find them. More after the break!

First off, the Thursday flight was annoyingly early in the morning because I only pick the cheapest flights dammit. This is evidently a common trait among my fellow vendors as The Paper Pony group was on the same plane with me both on the way there and on the way back. Southwest is typically the way to go if you're American. I mean, shit, you get TWO free bags, and that's before the carry on and oversized purse!
Getting two free bags is like getting two Horse News writers for the price of one!
...HN writer rentals begin in late June.
Anyways, about 8 hours later we were there, and while waiting for the free hotel shuttle we met up with Linemonkey and ILoveKimPossibleAlot, although at the time I had no idea who the hell Kim was until she started giving advice on her friend's cell. Something about an alicorn OC, I don't fucking know. I like looking out windows, ok?

I've been informed she does analysis.
Finally, I arrived at the mostly empty hotel early Thursday afternoon and only barely saw Capper and crew before heading up to my hotel room to unload my bags and chill. It was around that time that my vendor assistant/ waifu/ cute science pone Calpain texted me that he was going to be about 6 hours late because he missed his initial flight. From there, Thursday was basically a blur of hanging out with the Horse News group and general lurking.

Some guy even tilted his cap 90's style just for this photo.
I'm sorry if that ruins the magic for some of you.
When registration eventually happened, I had slowly progressed from 5th in line to 1st in the vendor/community guest/money splurger line. I'm not sure whether I was accidentally being intimidating with my general tiredness or if they just wanted to stare at dat ass, but about 45 minutes after registration was supposed to start I got my badge. From there, it was dinner time with HN and then vendor set up.
It was also time to glue shit together.
When I actually got to the vendor's room with my goods the room was surprisingly empty. Even after eating out there were maybe a third of the vendors there with zero completed set ups. It was around 8pm and the room closed at 10. Apparently because they had merged too many different kinds of badge types into one line vendors were delayed on Thursday. But whatever, I managed to set up all my stuff in about an hour and headed back to the hotel room to get some well deserved rest for the big sales day tomorrow.
It probably helped that half of my set up was done before I even left Florida.
Friday Cal and I woke up bright and early to double check the vendor set up and give him some quick training. While it took about an hour for a decent amount of people to start checking out my table on Friday, (I was next to the exit and the line for Twilight's Secret Ship Fic was so big it temporarily blocked a lot of the traffic), once people came they wouldn't stop. Sales were AMAZING Friday, following a common trend a lot of brony vendor rooms have: Instead of Saturday being the main sales day (like it is at most anime/nerd cons), Friday is the best sales day. There's multiple theories I have on why there's a difference, but c'mon, this article is already long enough.
Not a lot of mystery bags sold that day, but bargain shopping is for Sundays!
What really helped boost sales that weekend were the 5 plushies of background and villain characters I packed that sold out and the plushies that I bought and resold from some guy only selling them for $25 each. He wasn't even mad when I almost sold out of all the extra plushies. He was actually kind of shocked that people were actually willing to pay triple regular Ebay prices, and I was shocked that this wasn't the guy's first brony convention vending. Don't feel too bad for the guy, because his plushies sold out. It's all about supply and demand. People want their plushies and they want them now.
The plushies sold so quickly I wasn't even able to take a photo of them, so have this photo instead.
I mean, the guy to the right is basically just a giant pulsating horse plush.
Friday night we chilled in the hotel room and then hung out with Capper and gang in his hotel room. drinks were consumed and eventually drunk Mario Kart was had. I'd say I'm sorry for cussing a little in front of young teenagers, but I'm pretty sure I didn't add any new words to their vocabulary. It still felt good to beat most of the people I raced against drunk.
I couldn't beat Brad that night though. I don't think I ever will...
Saturday morning we woke up earlier than usual for the season 5 premiere, and thanks to Capper and Calpain we were able to view a stream of the episode live in a small hotel room. While it might not have been as hype as watching it with an entire convention, we later learned that the convention showing was late and had some issues. On the bright side, thanks to the issues they opened the vendor's hall later, which meant that I actually had time to eat breakfast with the EQD group. I heard rumors about the American diner across the street having bad service last year, but I never experienced it this year. The food was pretty good and fairly priced, so I ended up eating there for half my meals.
The best part about the show viewing was seeing Capper in a wife beater
Er, I mean getting to watch an episode together with friends.
Saturday was a little slower than Friday in terms of sales, but as stated before that is the norm at brony cons. Overall it was still a good sales day, especially considering that I had nearly broken even the day before. Since I actually had an assistant this time around I figured I'd go to the charity auction and see how my donated art piece fared along with a few other artists I know. It was baby's first charity auction and I was probably a tad too excited over it. 
D-Did I put enough hearts in it?
The charity auction was unfortunately way too long and there was too much emphasis placed on unsigned shirts that all basically just said "I <3 my brony" with a horse ass instead of a heart. Only one art piece went for over $1k, and several others were under priced. Mine sold at $100, which while it does account for the materials used it only counted for about 5 hours of labor out of 12. I think I would have rather kept Chrysalis for myself and donated $100 out of my own pocket to charity. Thanks for making me depressed until the /mlp/ party, charity item sorters. Next time can you please just save the crappy mass produced shirts and calenders for last?

I still get a little sad remembering it, so have a photo of this cute Newsie pone.
Saturday night soon came upon us, and it sure was #unprofessional. Now granted, some would argue that the use of 21+ wristbands and not letting anyone in while the 'performer' was there is actually quite professional, but that word had been sullied long ago. Now every time someone uses the word 'professional' they're met with snarky snickering and Final Draft jokes. Sometimes even wedgies, but that's mostly just Ivan.
At the /mlp/ party, it didn't matter if you were a namefag or not.
All that mattered is that you were 21+ and had a wristband.
The party itself was phenomenal. There was an open bar, people everywhere but still enough walking room to move about, and even live entertainment. Oh, and if red cups weren't good enough drink containers for you, you could always drink out of the huge veined horse dick. I'd say you'd be surprised how many people gave it a go, but c'mon, these are horse fuckers we're talking about here.
Sucking horse cock is such a common occurrence around here that people
 would rather spend their time texting instead of ogling.
Here at HN, we get our news straight out of the horse's mouth penis.
 As for the entertainment, I promised you secret candid photos of the stripper, and here they are. One guy got a little too touchy, but the group pulled him back pretty quickly.
Chelis was stripping down with such eagerness that my phone camera couldn't even handle it.
Hey Ponytoast, don't you know that cosplay isn't consent? Tsk tsk.
Saturday night came and went in what felt like an instant. Cal and I only had one drink each because of the mini hangovers we had from drinking the night before, but you didn't need to be drunk to enjoy the hell out of that party.
Alright, enough of the juicy stuff. Back to boring PG cutesy pones.
Sunday was a slow day, as usual, so I spent a good 2 hours running around trading my crafts for art prints. Yes, surprise surprise, I'm a HN vendor and yet still love both the show and the art that the fandom creates. As much as I love money that's not the major reason I go to cons, so if I lose a little while trading so be it. I still have a teeny tiny little bit of my soul leftover. By the end of trading, I had hardly stock left and ended up packing early so that I could enjoy my last few hours with the waifu.

Well, waifu and crew anyways.
I... I can't tell if this is a good photo of Black Gryphon or a bad one.
We ended up eating dinner at Red Robins with some EQD staff, some youtube #horsefamous people like Saberspark, Black Gryphon, and Foal Paper's nose. Oh, and apparently right after Sethisto became a man at the /mlp/ party he hired himself a look alike bodyguard. I dunno, you be the judge, is he getting his money's worth?
Seth's got a ways to go on the facial hair, but I think he can manage it now.
The food was expensive, but Calpain splurged $10 just to tip the waitress, not including the cost of his food. Speaking of his food, the poor guy left a nearly untouched burger behind in a take out box and came in too late to get it back. RIP burger and Cal's stomach. And, because our taxis came in so late, that was basically the end of Sunday.

I know what HN would have done if they threw out their burger.
Granted, there was a hangout at Capper's place Sunday night and some artist spilled her spaghetti on Twitter over a tweet that Capper accidentally got sent out on the "hacked" Babscon Twitter. (Some recently fired PR guy still had the Twitter password and was drinking with an also intoxicated Capper and thought an LPU tweet would be hilarious.) The spaghetti was coincidentally met by many favorites and retweets from non-Babscon convention staff / #horsefamous people that weren't invited to Babs. But hey, I'm sure they just favorited it because they wholeheartedly agreed with her plight, and not because they wanted to see Babscon fail. I mean, who on earth would be that petty over another high attendance convention happening at a totally different time and location then theirs, amiright?

Babscon 2015 was a fantastic convention weekend! While there were a few bumps on the way, the weekend was overall a smooth ride. I'm already looking forward to next year, both for business and for fun. My sales reached record highs, (the plushies did help tremendously), and I plan on bringing many more background and princess characters with me next year as well as my next cons this year. The majority of the vendors I talked to also said they did pretty well, so it looks like Babscon vendor room competition is going to be tighter than ever from here on out!

Comments (11)

  1. I wonder if the owner of the horse dildo actually had it up his ass before letting people drink booze from it.

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    Replies
    1. If they did, they'd be a huge asshole.

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    2. You shouldn't make fun of people who can smuggle a third of Colombian GDP in one go.

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    3. Ren, if that was an intentional pun, it's good. If it was an accidental pun, it's genius.

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  2. You guys are such fags.

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    1. You skipped straight down to the stripper photos, didn't you?

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    2. No, because everybody expected no less than a donkey show from you and instead they got this...

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    3. I dunno, I heard that a lot of the other brony parties got shut down for various reasons, but the /mlp/ party was allowed to go on. Sound like cool fags, like freddy mercury.

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    4. Hey it's "interspecies erotica" faggots, get it right

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  3. That was a helluva party. Interesting to see how you left out the part when you got to join in the fun with the "entertainment." XP

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  4. I don't give a flying fuck about your elitist clique parties. Shove this and your article so far up your ass it comes out your nose.

    ReplyDelete