Pokekon 2025

The deets

Where: Grovetown, GA

When: Early August

Table Cost: $125

Attendance: estimated 2,000

The space

This is the third event we’ve tabled at run by these organizers. These organizers run all the pop-culture related events in the Augusta area including Anime-Fest, Augusta Con, and Georgia Horror-Fest. The event location and space were the same as August Anime-Fest, but there were far fewer vendor tables (total of 50) giving us much more space to store things behind our tables. Several other vendors were no shows, (8 out of 50) which was disappointing to see, but the event organizers let present vendors expand their set ups into the vacant spaces which helped optics.

The market

There is no dedicated artist alley, so expect to be in the minority if you are selling fanart or original art. Most of the vendors are resellers of anime merch resellers, TCG traders/sellers, or 3D printed object sellers. We guestimate that there were only 4 actual artists selling their own stuff, us included.

The audience

This was the first time this Pokemon-themed event had been run, and it was timed two weeks after their previous event (Augusta Con). Other vendors who attended both events said that turnout was similar. The attendees of this con are mainly families with very young children, but some folks do linger for the whole day and do multiple loops of the event space.

The sales

We made between 2-3x table cost, a marked improvement over Anime-Fest in May.

For this 1-day con our time invested amounted to 7 hours of active vending and 1.5 hours of combined set-up and break-down time (total of 8.5 hours).

Items that sold the best were stickers, charms, and lanyards. We did get two preorders on our biggest ticket item (blankets). Most people paid with card rather than cash. We did not get a single print sale.

Pros

• Table cost includes a 6’ table, 2 chairs, and 2 vendor passes (handstamps)

• Free parking with easy load in and load out, single story building so no worries about stairs or elevators

• Attendees and event staff are friendly

Cons

• No food trucks or food vendors on site, make sure to pack a lunch and snacks

• Stage for karaoke and costume contest is in the same room as vendors, so can get noisy towards the end of the event

• No separation between resellers and artists

• Long lines for one table would block traffic for another