The first Blackhawks Convention has come and gone. Since this blog entry is in Art 101 I’ll focus on the art and business aspects of the convention, rather than my personal opinions and emotions connected with it. I’ve enjoyed reading all of the email from young artist’s concerning the business end of the artistic endeavor and hope they can learn something from all of these blogs. Remember kids, business is work-hard work-and there’s no one to blame for poor preparation and mistakes but yourself. A lot of artist’s aren’t prepared to be business people!
The ‘first time’ is always an adventure, and the only way to move forward, as an artist or a business, is to commit to the adventure and do the best you can. The TIBSTRA STUDIO team worked overtime to prep for every contingency we could think of-afterall, we were working with the Chicago Unions, the Chicago Fire Marshall, and a practically all-new Blackhawks front office for the first time! I had some feeling for the reaction from the public after years of creating the NHL Milestone paintings, interacting with fans at practice and games, and making appearances at Road Watch gatherings. As expected, the fans were great! Sales were brisk, emotions were exuberant, I signed a lot of autographs, and people were happy. In fact, my only problem with the fans was that I couldn’t get away from my booth because of the autograph signings! There were a lot of folks connected with the Hawks of ‘old’ I wanted to visit with, and that didn’t happen.
Back to business. The contract and stipulations concerning the convention was as thick as a book and very intimidating. There were strict warnings concerning copyright infringements, use of the Hawk’s logos and colors, use of Union Labor, and how much inventory we could have on hand each session. We struggled to conform to the letter of the agreement in every category and succeeded-only to find that other exhibitors completely ignored all the rules without penalty. Live and learn.
I took a trip to the Hilton, leaving Prospect’s Camp early one day, to overview the layout of the Convention and my location in it days before it opened. The following morning I designed and set up a full scale mock up of my booth and timed the set up and take down time to conform to the contract’s ’20 minute limit’. I succeeded, but no one cared! It was still very useful to know how to set up displays, workflow, traffic patterns, etc. in advance and gave me some peace of mind before the actual event.
The convention was expensive to attend. Some of the veteran exhibitors claimed that the set-up fees for this convention was nearly double that of the Cubs or Sox, but I can’t confirm that. We designed our set up to be done without union help, yet I understand much of the fees we paid involved ‘built in fees’ for the Union. Sticking to the letter of the contract was detrimental to us again! To my knowledge I was never inspected by the Fire Marshall, so our trips back and forth from the Studio in Kankakee would have been unnecessary-as was keeping our printers on overtime on a weekend in case we needed more inventory from day to day. OUCH! Still, after all was said and done and paid we turned a profit. We would have benefited a great deal by being exposed to the fans BEFORE they lined up for player autographs, many of which took the entire day. We would have been helped a lot by a mapped listing and description of who each vendor was and what they provided to the fans in their official Convention program.
There were lessons I learned from my first convention that will make preparations for the next one much more tolerable, relaxed and profitable. There are lessons the Hawks will need to learn and address that will do the same. We’re all on an adventure into this new era of the Blackhawks together. Stick around to see where the ride takes me!
