2024 Events Wrap Up

In 2024, we went to a lot of events. 24 (fitting!) to be exact— and that’s ONLY counting events that we vended at!

We did 3 events in 2023 as we had just started our business at the end of the year, and while it may stand to reason that our intention would be to go to even MORE events this year, that isn’t going to be the case, and that’s for a few reasons.

ONE: It’s a lot of traveling. As I said before, we did 24 events, and that was across 5 WEST COAST states, often traveling through more. Now, you may think: “Why not just travel to fewer events?” While this is a good gander, we like a lot of the events that are further away! Either we like the event organizers, or we like what they stand for! They enable us to see friends and family along the way, and it’s exciting for us! Truthfully, the thing it really made us realize, is we just need to be more critical with what events we travel to. It’s hard when Sam and I also travel for work and gigs a decent amount of the time, but we love seeing the friends we have met from some far off events. So expect us at a few out-of-state events next year, but maybe not as many that are first-time events for us.

TWO: Losing our weekends is hard. Sam has worked a full time job the whole time we’ve had our business. I have also worked a full time job for most of our growth. Weekends are a sacred time that was fun to spend grinding on the small business for awhile, but has quickly soured. It felt worth it when it was for big cool events, but it just didn’t feel as worth it for those smaller events where we would have to wake up at 7 AM to get to our booth space to set up and then have to tear down in the same day. We’re not really morning people, so this at time has really affected us. This is to say, we’re being a bit more choosey with events and leaning towards fewer that require we be up bright and early for them. We’re trying to have some rest in 2025.

THREE: The money. This, like the travel one, is kind of a give and take. The booth fees we paid this year ranged from 25$ to 600$ for spaces at events. It’s hard to know how much you’re going to make at event going into it, and we’re lucky enough to say that we only have ONE event where we didn’t make back our booth fee— but weirdly enough, we would go to that event again. Why? Because it was fun. It’s not always about the money, but a lot of time it can be! If the event is so boring that we as vendors are also bored, of course people aren’t showing up and aren’t buying things. At least if an event was so fun that we as vendors had fun, word of mouth can be a powerful thing that makes that event better for next time. 2024 was the year of figuring out which events had a level of fun that makes us want to attend again, or cross of our list, despite our margins on the event being good.

FOUR: Our growth. In 2024, we did a lot of small events. We connected with a lot of people, and we connected with a lot of people who didn’t event buy products from us. Since our goal in 2025 is to lean more into custom bulk orders and potentially wholesale, we are leaning into a few more industry events or conventions. As much as we would love to spend time continuing to go to the small markets, the amount of people we see and talk to who are catering to that side we want to grow on is few and far between.

So, what does 2025 look like? We have about 10 events lined up already, and they are a mix of big conventions and shows that did really well for us last year. We’re trying to support our other small business artist friends in LA and do events with them, and have some fun for ourselves. We love the bookish scene, so expect to see us popping up more around there! We didn’t expect the start of 2025 to come in blazing (…literally.) but it’s also gotten us to do our first ever bit of charity. 20% of our online sales profit till the end of January will be donated to the Pasadena Humane Society, who has been so amazing in helping out animals abandoned or displaced during the fires in Los Angeles. We know we’re just starting with it, but I hope it allows for us to do more things like this in the future, and continue to help other beings in need.