AX2013 Culture Japan Booth

Running for 22 consecutive years now, Anime Expo must be the worlds largest anime focused event in terms of unique attendees - this year we went over 62,000!
But to tell you the truth I think the official numbers must be wrong - there just has to be more! Los Angeles Convention Center is huge and was constantly just filled with anime fans absolutely everywhere - inside and out!

This is my 4th year attending Anime Expo in Los Angeles and is the first time we had a booth selling Mirai Suenaga goodies - we called it Mirai Mart ^^;

This post shows you some of the setting up, what went on in the middle and how we had to change the layout of the booth on the 3rd day because we ran out of stuff to sell - we sold half of our stock on the first day of AX 2013.

We had Moekana T-shirts Hinomaru (Japanese Flag), Tora (Tiger) and a new design called "Millennium Girls."
We also had our own Japanese learning products Moekana and Moekanji together with the Mirai Deck Cases and posters too.

The booth layout was changed into a Moekana card game playing area so that the booth would not look so sad with all stock gone ><

In the future we will have a display of Smart Dolls so we will be OK but for the time being we need to prepare to convert the booth into a Moekana playing area in the event that we sell out during a long event.

After Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2012, we realised that Mirai Suenaga was more popular than we anticipated in Asia and that her fans had been waiting for some of her merchandise for a while.

As it was our first time in the US however, I wasn't sure how popular she was so we only brought with us about 1000 T-shirts - sorry to all who dropped by after we sold out ><

However! We will be attending more cons in the US - ones that spring to mind are Sakuracon, Anime Boston and Kawaiicon - what US cons do you think we should be attending?

This post contains a poll, click here to view.

We had a team of 17 comrades to help out. Staff members are chosen through observing their interest in our brand. For example, one of our team members cosplayed as Eiji Seiun at Anime Expo last year and I met him at my panel. I saw his photo posts on Figure.fm and had enough information to make a judgement call that we can trust him.

We have many folks say that they want to help out and while we would love to trust everybody who makes an offer - it just makes sense to select folks who have already reached out to our brand through their comments on this site or showing their interest through fanart or cosplaying our characters, building a simple app or connecting with our brand through Facebook or Twitter.

I always watch the community so if you are interested in working with us in the future, please start to reach out and participate!

We thought we brought enough goodies - we were wrong! We plan to increase our selection and make available online too through our own e-commerce store.

Taylor! - thank this guy for all the techy stuff at AX.

Setting up booth.

The booth construction vendor that Anime Expo used is one of the most professional companies we've worked with so far - when we arrived, all we had to do was display stuff - all construction, lighting, wiring and printing was done as soon as we got there to set up on Day 0. Blane Convention Services are the biz!

For some other cons its not quite so smooth >< hardboard foam panels come as stickers and we need to wipe footprints from the walls and face smear marks from the glass cabinets ^^;

I only had 1 Smart Doll with me which is why she wasn't on display from time to time as I needed her on stage.

Nearly done!

Michael and Alan at the controls.

The queue - sorry to keep you guys waiting and thanks for coming!
If you bought something then post your loot photos in the comments below!

Thanks to the Doki Doki Maids for helping out too!

Alodia joined us for AX2013! I have a feeling she will be back soon ^o^

Mini Mirai at the controls of the Itasha.

The videos that we played are up at YouTube.

My man Tofuprod to my right - he has just finished work on Pacific Rim which I must see before going back to Japan!

Our ladies in charge of the booth.

Sueanga typo!!! ><

Mirai Suenaga showcase of cosplay and fanart.

Illustrated by INO sensei.

The best Iron Man cosplay was at AX 2013!

Kigurumi Mirai ^o^

Daughter VS Father.

Paper Mario cosplay.

The two Chitose and Kizuna cards to complete your Moekanji collection ^o^

We use Square to manage our inventory and sales - we also got the reader too for credit card orders which was a lifesaver as 50% of orders was credit card.