HUGE disclaimer: All said here are my personal experiences, and it doesn’t reflect other people’s experiences at the event. The employees and organizers took a tremendous amount of effort in making this event happen, and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to vend here. This review intends to highlight certain issues that need to be addressed for another successful market. TQ in understanding!
First impression
I first heard of this event through a friend who does comics often with their partner and they said this is an up-and-coming event that has had positive, successful events in the past. I decided to take a chance and apply because I love how they represent indie and underrepresented artists, and it encourages independent work, so I decided to give it a shot!
New Items!!!
Before getting into the nitty gritty, these are some of the new items and designs I made for the market!



I was so caught up with work, so not a lot of new items this time around - but a lot of ideas were being doodled and will be made in the future - Hint: Nunu with wings + more usable items that can be carried ᵕ̈
Let’s start with the positives
Great communication, all my questions were replied to very quickly, and their website is well organized with enough information. I looked up the venue, and the space looked fairly spacious. Amazing, diverse amount of artists were tabling there so I was able to connect with many new up-and-coming artists! Well done with the communication and diversity aspect. Affordable tabling fees and the general customer interactions were very great, no complaints on that !!
I was not expecting the number of artists…
Way back in January, I got my acceptance fairly early, and I soon found out a lot of my vending friends got accepted as well. Which is great overall as we are all doing this together! Until.. I found out a day before the event that they’ve accepted 450+ artists. I was also confused where I would be placed, as no table number or artist map were issued to us. I voiced these concerns (ie, how would they handle crowds) with the organizer, and I was given reassurance that it would be seamless. I had good hopes but I was also preparing myself if things didn’t go properly.
Marketing: Low Promotion = less attention/foot traffic
BICS had great ambitions in making this a large-scale event. However, with big events come big responsibilities. Weeks leading up to the event, there was little to no promotion being made of the event for vending artists. It’s quite sad as they did a lot with reposting artists’ profiles last year, but I feel the staff may be preoccupied with other priorities, and this aspect was overlooked. It’s to a point where the artists from both sides have to promote each other while the event is happening to further improve traffic. Stories were being reposted on the day of the event, however, I feel given there’s limited momentum leading to the event, it was overlooked.
Location: I got lost, but also found [my table]
Though check in was seamless - It was hard navigating towards the building as there were no physical directional signage indicating where the event is, but luckily the staff at the location was able to point out where I should be headed when I arrived; Though for customers it was difficult too, a few mentioned to me there were a few turns + scouvering that needed to be made before arriving at the convention destination.
Space Review: Sauna day + Elevators not working = Sweat and grump
BICS had two show floors - yellow and blue (later known as minion and Sonic) Yellow was located on the second floor, accessible through stairs, and blue was located on the 6th floor which is accessible through an elevator.
I can speak for my experience on the blue showfloor and I think BICS could do better in spacing out the floor; my fellow table mates and I were almost Ass to Ass LOL (bre this was so funny tq for telling me, follow her shes funny) Though a good thing is it does allow customers to be able to push closer to table and allow them to take a closer look at vendor items. However, given tight spaces with limited ventilation, the space increasingly got hot throughout the rainy Saturday, and the air got very stagnant as well, so we were all in a humid sauna at one point :P NGL it was quite hard to maintain high spirits in grump weather/environment - Tip to myself to bring a fan every time to an event!!!
Also, being at the blue showcase side, we were located on the 6th floor, and our elevator gave up a few times on Saturday. I think at one point the whole showfloor was quiet because people weren’t able to get up there. Limited signage were done for bathrooms and moreover, they were located on the bottom of the floor so running up and down the stairs was my cardio for the day.
Best Sellers:
Stickers in general - LOL its actually funny My $1 illegally smol cat stickers did the best
Ocean cup nunu - I was told customers love when nunu and the starfish got a BBL - that was funny. Butts are very important.
LIBRARY cup nunu - guess people love nunu writing fan fiction ; )
Sales: Did you make any good profit?
Honestly, yes and no - I think I did pretty good given I have limited comic items, apart from my zine. Though I feel that given the limited promotion = lack of foot traffic and in addition to many artists vending - both comics and non-comics - being present, the profits were spread widely amongst everyone. I feel if the market had better screening processes of artists and had better curation of the event + promotion, the profits may be better. I am grateful to have a day job to cover certain expenses, and also have returning customers that have been following me for a while that came to support - but I cannot imagine those who do markets full time or those who are doing comics full time experiencing losses, as this event is catered perdominately comics artists.
“Markets/conventions are like a box of chocolates - you wouldn’t know what you would get! “
Would you do it again?
If there are further improvements, 70% yes. Also, I feel this is catered towards comics artists so given I mostly do trinkety or “homegoods” products this may not be the convention for me to vend in the near future. Though it’s still a great learning experience overall and its great meeting new artists that I haven’t met before!
General thoughts + Lighter note
Given how ambitious they can be, I genuinely think BICS have great potential to make this event more successful. When it comes to large-scale events, there come with great pitfalls as well. I think if BICS could take a step back and reevaluate their priorities with what they want their event to be ; that single step would greatly improve the curation of this event for the future.
This goes without saying, the customers were so lovely, in addition to their unwavering support, I am so glad that customers empathize with how much hard work goes into making art, that validation was so much needed. There were so many familiar faces as well and It makes me so happy to create art that resonates with my audiences. you know who you are ;)
And OH the wonderful artists vending there, when I was aware of how limited foot traffic was, I kept telling my customers to go to the yellow side, and that’s when I also heard word from customers telling me that the vendors from the yellow show floor were telling customers to check out the blue side! Us helping each other in a symbiotic sense is what really strengthens this community, and I am so glad to be part of it. Everyone maintained such a resilient and optimistic attitude and that inspires me to look at the brighter side of things when shi* happens!
Lastly - the curators and staff of BICS, this is just the start of something bigger and better. I can’t imagine how many difficult decisions and hurdles to make this event happen. Despite everything, I think them holding on being professional about this and receiving the feedback is very admirable and I cant wait to see what they can do in the future.
Big thank yous !!!!
The curators of BICS - everyone that stopped by, my lovely customers, the out-of-this-world vendors - my wonderful husband ily for staying with me till the end <3







Till next time for my next review!! : D