Author: sammich

Closing Tictail

Closing Tictail

Because Shopify has purchased the Swedish company Tictail where we have put our fan art items, we have chosen to move our fan arts to this domain under a new shop. We have currently emptied out our Tictail shop and plan to put all items in a new e-commerce shop. We will also include Etsy items in a one-location shop. That means we will have both our fan art and handmade items together in one shop.

We are also adding more items as we gear up for the new season of cons coming up. So far we are staying in San Antonio and are excited to attend Mizuumicon on Saturday April 6, 2019! The location is San Antonio NW Marriott located on 3233 Northwest Loop 410, San Antonio, TX 78213. More information on the convention can be found here.

San Japan XI post-con report!

San Japan XI post-con report!

San Japan 11 was August 31st through September 2nd this year. Jam and I were prepping for quite a while. We had introduced a few new items like a new Magikarp and Mew acrylic charm as well as purrmaid-themed bookmarks and coinpurses. We also had Avi along with us and she focused on producing BTS and BT21 related fan-merchandise.

Friday was fairly busy. Even from the start! I was quite surprised as sometimes Friday mornings aren’t always super busy. People seemed to be eager to look at artist alley before heading to dealers room. Many people tend to browse first and then purchase on Saturday.

Saturday was also quite busy. As usual this was the day where we found most one day badges. We were able to take on a few commissions during the weekend, but I think it’s probably best if a person is looking to ask for commissions to get to their artist as early as possible, such as Friday. This will help the artist have more time to finish the art. There were times when even though there were three of us, all of us were occupied helping people and there was no way to work on commissions. Fortunately all work got done in time!

Sunday started off rather slow, but there was still plenty of people looking to spend in artist alley. We were fortunate enough to have a spot near the entrance and exit. The aisle we had was also rather wide, so it seemed people were able to travel by more freely. The other aisles in the alley were close together. Some artist friends confided that they felt people were pushed through and didn’t have ample time to look at the art. I did go through AA several times, and it was a bit cramped. There’s plenty of room in the hall so it’s merely a problem of table spacing and planning.

Overall, it was a great convention! We’d love to come back, if lottery is in our favor! It’s our home con and we’ve seen it grow and grow. It’s fun to see international artists come to San Antonio and it helps us to feel like we can do well too, when we try. We sold out of a few items and it was quite encouraging! We hope to re-open our Etsy and Tictail and put more items in. (Though we initially planned to move a store to this domain, we are pending on that while we find a nicer store script.)

Etsy Policy Change

Etsy will be changing their policy soon. Etsy will be increasing their transaction fee to 5% that will also apply to shipping. It appears that they are trying to move towards a subscription based model. There is a FREE option for now, but the cheapest subscription will be $10 until January, then it is $20 a month. (A breakdown of the plans.) These changes should take effect on July 16th. (Etsy Update)

Etsy has argued that the increase in fees will help the seller because Etsy will increase their marketing. ( quote )

Unfortunately what that means for JamSammich is that we probably won’t be able to continue to list our items for sale on Etsy and going forward, we will look for an alternative.

Miniminicon 2018

Miniminicon 2018

Thank you to everyone who came by our booth at Mini-Mini Con this year! We had a good time, and hope everyone else had an enjoyable day as well!

We had two tables this time, so we got to try out some new products and displays!

In case you missed us, we’ll be at San Japan later this year! Feel free to send us a message if you have any questions about any of our products and we’ll try to reply ASAP! In the mean time, we’ll be reworking out online shops with more of our products. We’ll update again as we work on that!