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Industrious Illustrating #46 – Common Merchandise Types

Robin Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! In previous weeks I’ve gone over profit margins and event types that artists can sell at. This week, I’m discussing a few different types of merchandise that I personally offer and their most common prices at pop culture convention Artist Alleys and online sales. Since this is another long post, I put my list underneath a Read More:

Read more: Industrious Illustrating #46 – Common Merchandise Types

Stickers ($3-8)

I used to sell stickers, but I stopped because the thin profit margin wasn’t worth how much trouble it was to market and display them in exchange for enough money to maybe buy myself a single boba per sticker. Other artists see great success with selling large volumes of them or in addition to higher priced items though. It all depends on your business strategy!
Keep in mind that some event venues will outright ban stickers and other sticky-backed items (phone grips, window decals, etc.) because of potential vandalism.

Buttons/Pins ($3-$15+)

While buttons and pins are sometimes used interchangeably as terms, they describe different types of merchandise. Buttons are typically laminated paper pressed into a metal backing with a safety pin attached on the back to secure it to clothing or other soft materials. Pins are typically wood, acrylic, metal, or enamel with an attached pin post (shaped like a metal nail) and “clutch” (typically rubber or metal) to attach it to soft materials. Pins are also typically more expensive than buttons because of the higher production cost that comes from outsourcing them to a manufacturer rather than being able to mass-produce them at home using a button press. However, these two types of merch are oftentimes displayed together on table displays using corkboard, canvas banners, vinyl cubes, etc. Prices on buttons and pins vary a lot and are generally dependent on the production cost, size, materials, etc.

I currently sell some specialty buttons shaped like coffins or made of soft plush material and a few pins either made out of metal in the shape of a bottle cap or made of responsibly sourced wood. They’re not my bestsellers, but I’ll see how they’ll do over time as I accumulate more online sales and attend more events to sell my art.

Most of my coffin-shaped button designs

A wood pin I’ve made with a fat squirrel design.

Acrylic Charms ($8-$20+)

Acrylic charms are printed 2D artwork sealed within a (typically) laser-cut piece of acrylic cut to the artwork’s outline. The most common size of charm that I see is 2.5 inches with a clear border around the design and a hole in the top with a metal keychain clasp for hanging the charm on something else.

These typically sell for about $12-15, which may seem like a lot for such a small and simple item until you remember that acrylic charms are almost all produced in China (so, higher shipping costs than sourcing domestically like you can for prints) and are relatively sturdy and long-lasting compared to stickers or prints.

Larger charms and charms with special finishes/gimmicks such as holographic finish, foil accents, attached hanging acrylic pieces, special clasp designs, an internal compartment with shakable acrylic pieces, etc. can sell for a higher price, typically somewhere between $20-$30. Charms smaller than 2.5 inches can go for lower, typically somewhere between $8-$10. There’s also charms made of other materials such as metal, wood, PVC, and enamel, but they’re a lot less common than acrylic charms either for durability or cost reasons.

Charms sell best for me through online sales compared to other merchandise types. I assume this is because charms take up less space and that the charms I offer are in a niche that doesn’t have many other artists making small merchandise (mecha/robots) even when compared to the broader internet.

Two recent acrylic charm designs I made that far surpassed my sales expectations when I listed them online

Prints ($10-$25+)

Prints without specialty finishes like holographic (rainbow crystal) laminate or metallic spot foil accents are fairly cheap to produce, totaling about 1 dollar per print for 11×17 inch prints and even lower for smaller prints like 8.5×11″ or 4×6″ prints. Their high price point compared to their production cost comes from the length of time a typical print artwork takes compared to smaller merchandise with simpler designs, and also their relative large size compared to other forms of cheap-to-produce merch such as stickers and buttons. This still means that their profit margins are much better compared to other merchandise types, which also means that competition in the print-selling market is extremely competitive, especially in Artist Alley.

The most common prices I see for common print sizes at pop culture conventions is $10 for 4×6/5×7 prints, $15 for 8×10/8.5×11″ prints, $20-$25 for 11×17/12×18″ prints, and much higher for anything larger. Specialty finishes up the prices per print size by at least $5, though in my experience customers are willing to pay an additional $10 or more for a special shiny-looking print. However, these prices are actually relatively low compared to how much fine artists charge for prints at fine art events, as the typical attendee there is expecting higher prices compared to the average anime or comic con attendee.

My best-seller at cons is by far prints, though prints also account for a majority of the merchandise that I offer in the first place.

Examples of holographic finish prints that I sell online and at my Artist Alley table

Apparel ($20+)

I don’t personally sell apparel because of the high cost per unit (at least $10 per printed shirt) and the amount of stock I’d have to order for sizes S through XL without knowing if it’d actually sell, but there’s some artists who sell shirts or sweaters either printed on by a third-party manufacturer or that they screenprint on themselves. There’s a decent amount of potential money to be made by selling apparel since it’s not a common Artist Alley item and a lot of customers see appeal in functional items, but it also takes up a lot of storage space (a problem especially for weight restrictions on flights for faraway events) and you end up having to compete on price with fast-fashion corporations who can afford razor-thin profit margins far more than an independent artist can.

Other merchandise?

Keep in mind that this list is far from exhaustive and that there’s lots of other things that you can either create yourself or get your art printed on! This is just meant as a quick introduction/overview of commonly sold merchandise types in the specific type of small art business that I currently work in.

Remember that the advantages of selling mass-produced merchandise based on an original drawing instead of focusing on selling one-of-a-kind original art pieces are that you can reuse your designs infinitely and across various types of merchandise to potentially make lots of sales across a long period of time from a few hours of labor. Your budget and time are the true limiting factors when it comes to what kind of merchandise you can create and offer as an independent artist!

Anyway, Motor City Comic Con is next weekend (November 10-12), so I’m waiting on several merchandise orders to ship in ahead of that con. I’ll be debuting new merchandise like rubber deskmats and double foil prints to experiment with what my customer base likes best, and I’ll be sure to write a column after that convention talking about how my first comic con tabling experience went!

Industrious Illustrating #45 – Conventions/Fairs

Robin 2 Comments

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! This week I’m going over the different types of events that artists can sell their artwork at and discussing basic information about their audiences, event sizes, etc. The general idea is that artists can pay a fee (anywhere from $50 for a small event to $300-$500+ for larger events) to an event’s organizers to rent out a table space (anywhere from 6-8 feet or more) that they sell at during show hours while the event is ongoing. The money earned from these can be pretty respectable (anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for the top-performing artists), but part of getting there is knowing what types of events are out there and whether or not their audiences will want to purchase one’s work.
Disclaimer: I’ll be mostly going over pop culture-related events because that’s what I’m most familiar with. There’s lots of fine arts-related events that are also worth considering that you could look into on Facebook Events or similar if that’s more of what you’re interested in, though!

Indie Comics Fairs

Indie comics fairs are typically small one or two-day events (a few hundred to a few thousand attendees at most) with programming and an artist alley highlighting independent comics artists and their original creations. Some of the bigger fairs of this type are the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo in Boston and MoCCA in New York City. I’ve never tabled at one before, but I enjoy attending them to look for zines, short comics, and original art prints — not so much popular culture fanart or non-paper types of merch — and most of the audience seems also be primarily interested in those types of merch.

Some local events worth checking out if you want to buy from and meet independent comics artists are A2CAF at the Ann Arbor District Library as well as the Detroit Zine Fest. And if you yourself make comics, these events are worth a try to make sales and reach out to potential fans of your work!

A recent A2CAF promotional image

Comic Conventions

Comic conventions tend to be larger than indie comics fairs, happening across a full three-day weekend (Fri-Sun) with thousands to tens of thousands of fans in attendance, and they focus more on highlighting big-name comics artists and Western pop culture celebrities as well as selling photo-op and autograph opportunities with them, although some comic conventions lately are trying to appeal to a broader nerd audience by bringing in anime voice actor or internet celebrity guests. Some of the biggest comic conventions in the country are San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con, and Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). The audience for these events tends to skew older with more of an interest in Western media and pop culture, though there’s also generally a decently sized audience for other forms of pop culture such as anime and video games. I’ve never tabled at a comic con before as of the writing of this post, but I am planning on tabling at Motor City Comic Con Fall in Novi from November 10-12 this year! I’ll likely write up a post afterward talking about how the convention went and sharing any insights I gained from trying out a new type of convention to sell at.

Motor City Comic Con’s logo.

Anime Conventions

Anime conventions are the type of convention I most frequently sell at, as most of my work appeals the most to anime fans either by being fanart of popular anime properties or being of a subject matter that anime fans tend to like (e.g. cool robots, cute animals). They’re typically focused on Japanese pop culture and animation, but lately properties from other regions of East Asia such as South Korea and Mainland China have become popular as well at anime cons, and many anime con attendees are also fans of Western pop culture media and video games. I’ll be tabling at Isshocon (also in Novi) in January 2024, which is a new first-year anime convention that I hope to see grow into a larger con. I also might be at Youmacon 2023 in Detroit next weekend (November 3-5) if I get off of the waitlist, but we’ll see about that.

Youmacon’s logo

If you want to try tabling at pop culture conventions but the several hundred dollar table fees and large crowds of larger conventions are too intimidating to get started, I highly, highly recommend applying for Con Ja Nai if you want to sell any kind of art that appeals to an anime or pop culture fan audience and you’re currently a student at UMich. Con Ja Nai happens every early April on a Saturday inside the Modern Languages Building with free admission, panels, a maid cafe, and a decently sized vendor hall/artist alley to browse. While Con Ja Nai is a small one-day college convention held by UMich’s anime club (Animania) that attracts a few hundred attendees at most, it’s very cheap to table at (about $15 for a 6 foot table space), the selection process prioritizes University of Michigan students (no need to deal with the lottery/jury applications gauntlet of bigger conventions) and the money is pretty good for the amount of attendees the event gets. Applications typically open around February or March and are typically shared in the Animania Discord server and/or on the convention’s website, so keep an eye out for that. I’ve actually posted on this column about tabling there a few times in the past, and I plan on doing so until I eventually graduate and move out of Ann Arbor.

A previous promotional image for Con Ja Nai.

Other small events?

While I did say earlier that I don’t have experience with fine arts events, there is a similar small art fair at the University of Michigan called the What the F! Art Fair that is still accepting applications until tomorrow, 10/28 (at the time of publication) for women, queer, and/or BIPOC artists to sell their art in any medium. I’ve done it twice and got the vibe that the attendees care mostly for looking at and purchasing original fine artwork, which isn’t what I sell but could be perfect for a different artist! You can find the application link here (note that I am not associated with the What the F magazine in any way whatsoever).

And that’s all for today! If there’s any topics you guys want me to cover or go into more detail on, please let me know in the comments! 🙂

Industrious Illustrating #44 – Manufacturing

Robin Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! Last week I talked about profit margins on mass-produced art merchandise, but that’s only part of the equation. This week I’m going to give a brief introduction to different types of manufacturers/suppliers who can produce your merchandise for you so that you don’t have to front the cost of expensive equipment yourself. For my merchandise specifically, I’ve ordered directly from manufacturers as well as through middlemen.

Read more: Industrious Illustrating #44 – Manufacturing

For absolute beginners, there’s Print on Demand services like Redbubble that do all the manufacturing and deliver merchandise directly to your customers for you, but they take a large chunk of the revenue (even larger than using a paid storefront like Etsy!) and the quality of their merchandise is harder to keep under your control. I don’t personally use these services, but they’re more accessible to artists who are just starting out with selling merch than ordering directly from manufacturers, especially as you don’t also need to purchase shipping supplies and fulfill orders on your own time.

Redbubble’s logo

For beginners who want to get a start on making their own merchandise and selling it directly through an online store or at conventions, Vograce is a Chinese manufacturer that specializes in acrylic charms but also does a lot of different merchandise types, all with very low MOQs and a relatively accessible website through Shopify. However, Vograce is a middleman for non-acrylic products (meaning that they charge more than directly ordering from the manufacturers they source from) and also has experienced a decline in quality in recent years because of an increasingly large number of orders. (By the way, the decline in quality that manufacturers sometimes experience when receiving too many new orders is why a lot of artists are reluctant to disclose their manufacturers publicly!) I’d advise ordering through Vograce only if you don’t want to spend time researching other manufacturers and are willing to accept the risk of receiving defective products.

Vograce's logo

Vograce’s logo

Middlemen are agents or companies that contact manufacturers on your behalf and help you set up and fulfill your merch orders for an additional cost. In fact, the case study I went over last week (my bottle cap pins) was ordered through a middleman who has a direct line of contact with a Chinese factory and did the file-checking and payment on my behalf. Some advantages of going through a middleman include tighter quality control, saving the time needed to vet manufacturers for quality, and being able to try out more types of merchandise that otherwise might require high risk and investment costs. Specifically, I was in a group order with other artists, so we could all order smaller quantities of merch and hit minimum order quantity (MOQ) as a group rather than fundraise for a large order or take a risk by paying out of pocket for hundreds of items that may or may not actually sell.

Directly ordering from manufacturers is generally the cheaper option over using a middleman, as you’re only paying for the time and supplies used by the manufacturer instead of also paying for the time and expertise of a middleman. The site I personally use for finding manufacturers is Alibaba, a website meant for businesses to directly source from manufacturers located around the world (although mostly located in China). Generally, Chinese manufacturing has lower prices and more specialized products than you can order domestically.

Alibaba's logo

Alibaba’s logo

There are some American manufacturers you can directly order products like acrylic charms and pins from, but they may not have as many options available and could end up being significantly more expensive. If they aren’t more expensive, there’s a good chance that they’re actually middlemen sourcing from China rather than actually manufacturing domestically (a common bait-and-switch with enamel pin companies specifically). I only order my prints (and, when I still sold them, stickers) through US companies for this reason, as they actually print domestically rather than having an incentive to secretly order specialized products from abroad. In terms of US-based printing companies, I definitely highly recommend CatPrint for their low MOQs, high quality printing, variety of paper types available, and relatively fast turn-around.

Catprint’s logo

However, some manufacturers have high MOQ for their products — possibly 100 units per order or more — that make them prohibitively difficult to order from as an individual. You’ll also have to do all the communication yourself, which means dealing with a language barrier if you’re (most likely) working with a Chinese manufacturer even though they have English-speaking representatives who’ll communicate with you. Alibaba can also be a difficult and overwhelming website to navigate if you don’t already know what you’re looking for, and you’ll likely have to both do your own research and ask around for price quotes on your merch orders to figure out what your best options are.

That’s all for today’s brief-ish introduction to manufacturing! I may go into this topic again in more depth at some point, but I’ll also want to talk about other topics first before I come back to this. I hope to see you guys again for next week’s column!

Industrious Illustrating #43 – Profit Margins

Robin Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! I’ve been super busy with midterms and midterm projects this week, but now that fall break is upon us I’ll have more time to draw for myself. I’m currently on the grind making new products to sell at Motor City Comic Con, so I’ve been thinking a lot about how much money I want to spend ordering new products and then how much I want to charge for them, which brings us to today’s topic:

Profit margins!

Profit margins are the difference between the cost of producing a product and the amount of money that the customer pays for them — so, the amount of money that the seller gets to take home at the end of the day. Good profit margins vary between industries and products, but generally the profit margin is at least 2x the original cost of producing the product so that the seller can put the profits toward paying for the production of new products, paying for their own living expenses, or both.

For independent artist sellers like myself, we oftentimes charge higher for our products than a large company making mass-produced goods would, as we make much smaller product runs (10-50 of a product rather than hundreds) and invest much of our own time and energy into making artwork on top of running a business, requiring larger returns on each product to justify the expense. For example, producing 11×17″ prints costs about $1 per print and prints of that size typically go for around $20 or more, but drawing the artwork that goes on those 11×17″ prints took many hours, meaning that we’d need to sell multiple $20 prints just to pay ourselves a minimum hourly wage for the artwork we made once costs have been subtracted from revenue.

As a case study of what a typical profit margin for a smaller product looks like, I recently designed these bottle cap pins which I’ve started selling online and plan to also sell at events in future. They’re made of metal, are about 1.2 inches in diameter, and feature the fanart I drew of a popular video game.

Because I ordered 20 of each bottle cap pin design, the per-unit cost was $1.6 — it would’ve been lower per unit if I’d ordered a larger quantity. However, as these were manufactured by a Chinese factory and had to be shipped to an agent for inspection before they were shipped to North America, I had to pay $18 for them to be shipped out of China, and then another $13 for them to be shipped out with another order of merchandise I’d made through the same middleman. Divided across 120 units of pins, that’s an additional per unit cost of approximately .20 cents, which brings the per-unit cost up to $1.8 a pin. ‘

Currently, I charge $10 per pin for individual sales, and approximately $8 per pin for bulk deal sales (e.g. buying all 6 pins together). This means I have about a 4x-5x production cost profit margin on my bottle cap pins. However, as the initial order of pins cost about $200, I’ll need to sell at least 20 individual pins or 4 $50 bulk deals just to earn back my production costs before I actually see a profit on these. Therefore, I was taking a decent risk when getting these produced — but as long as I can sell at least that amount of pins over time online and at events, I’ll be happy with my decision to try expanding my products into small items like pins.

Anyway, I hope that was a decently informative explainer about one aspect of running an art business, and I hope to see you guys again next week!

Industrious Illustrating #42 – Summer of Artwork

Robin Leave a comment

Hello,

Sorry about the late post! I had a bunch of deadlines and personal matters come up toward the end of the week, so This week, before I make posts about broad topics, I want to share some of the artwork I made over the summer that I liked the most.

I recently designed this shaker charm themed around Devil’s Hole pupfish, which are a critically endangered species of fish native only to a specific pool of water in Death Valley! Shaker charms are basically acrylic charms with a hollow interior compartment that has individual acrylic pieces which can be shaken around, as I demonstrate in the below video:

In other fun animal-themed merchandise, I also designed a fat squirrel wood pin as a fun and eco-friendly alternative to enamel pins. It’s a loving reference to the chonky squirrels that populate the Diag, though they also have general appeal for anyone who enjoys round orb-shaped cute animals.

I also made myself a logo to use on my branding online and at conventions featuring my original character Toshiaki and his mech “Bhairava”. It’s simple but also still drawn in my style to reflect my unique artistic style. You can also see it in the top right corner of the 2023-2024 Industrious Illustrating banner!

In terms of my digital painting skills, I spent a bunch of time working on improving my painting skills with bigger and more complex drawings than before! I translated one of my mecha digital paintings into a physical iridescent foil print which makes their lights change in color from different angles, defying the usual static rigidity of a paper print.

I also experimented with more complex perspective and color schemes I don’t usually use in my artwork:

All in all, I feel like I had a pretty fruitful summer of experimentation and improvement! I also tabled at a handful of smaller one-day events where I brought in alright sums of money to tide me over before I do a few three-day events in the winter, which I’ll talk about in another post! Anyway, see you guys again next week!

Industrious Illustrating #41 – Another Year!

Robin Leave a comment

Hello and welcome back to year 3 of Industrious Illustrating, which means a new header image! I’m going with a new header image look this year to reflect my growth and evolving identity as an artist. Each header image shows off some of the works I’m the most proud of making in the past few years.

In terms of other changes, I’ve been thinking recently about what I want this school year’s Industrious Illustrating columns to look like. Ever since I started selling art at anime cons over a year ago, more and more of this column has focused on conventions and upcoming events I’m doing. Just talking about these events in announcements isn’t the most riveting blog material, so I thought about how to make my experiences more interesting and unique as content.

I then decided that I’ll be putting a greater focus this year on writing about the ins and outs of being a freelancer and selling my art. While I will still post about the artwork I’ve made recently and the processes that go into making art, I also want to bring my own experiences running a small business as an artist to the table for people who may be interested in making that jump to marketing and selling their creations for money.

Some of the business topics I plan on addressing with this year’s Industrious Illustrating columns:

  • Profit margins
  • Different types of art products
  • The “marketing funnel”
  • Different types of art fairs/conventions
  • Fanart vs. original art
  • Commission invoices and finding clients
  • How much does a social media following matter?

And much more! I’m also up for doing columns about topics suggested in the comments on my posts, if anyone has questions or wants me to elaborate more on any of the topics I’ll talk about this year. Anyway, I hope you guys will continue to follow along with this blog column this year even now that I’m moving slightly to a new focus!