Your thoughts and impressions of the London Expo

Mutsumi · 29 May 2006

Re: Expo meh, hotel FTW

ledric said:
Oh and guys, sorry for puking in your toilet :roll:

That wasn't our toilet....

Shades · 29 May 2006

Yeah I wanted to meet Minxy in person as well, oh well its something to look forward to next time I suppose, oh and ledric you should pop along to the introductions section and say Hi to everyone 8)

SailorCalibur · 29 May 2006

Omg the soul calibur 3 hentai talking for hirlarious! lolxD who new you could turn harmless fighting games into a hentai ! lmfao came 6th in soul calibur

Darth Naruto · 30 May 2006

i dont why i couldnt find you guys............ :x

JAKEMAN · 30 May 2006

You didnt even see me lol I was pink and on stage lol

Kuonji · 30 May 2006

It was the first time I've ever been to it, and I enjoyed it. I did find the crowds and spacing a problem in trying to get stuff I wanted. Can't be helped though, of course. I was quite surprised to se the Sheffield Space Centre there, I must say

. They must have made a bundle over the weekend! Did anyone buy any of the doujinshi they had on that one stall? I was trying to find yuri and shoujo-ai but didn't have a lot of luck

ledric · 30 May 2006

Re: Expo meh, hotel FTW

Mutsumi said:
ledric said:

Oh and guys, sorry for puking in your toilet :roll:

Click to expand...

That wasn't our toilet....

Dear god, please tell me you're joking. 0.o heheh...

Tohru-san · 30 May 2006

I didn't see any of you guys there

Except you JAKEMAN when you were on stage

Great costume btw!

It was great cosplaying this year but I didn't buy much stuff and I lost my family's Â£300 digital camera which kind of ruined the day for me

Appart from that I enjoyed it ^_^

Hideki · 31 May 2006

Hi guys ^_^

Been a long time. We just got back from Expo and proablly met a few ANIME UK NEWs members at the show, hi ^_^

Paul, if you attend Expo please introduce yourself!

We got lots of feedback from the event and here i would like to address them as best as possible.

Generally everyone had positive feedback for us. Complimenting us for a vastly improved stall, great range of toys, lovely cosplayers, friendly service... and generally we were told we were the best ^_______^ Yay! All the hard work was worth it!

But we have read about some criticism which i will try my best to answer.

1. Prices where higher at the Expo than on our website.
That's not actually true. Most items and plucking a figure off the top of my head i would say 0nly about 10% of items would have been more expensive. Most items were either exactly the same price or even cheaper! For example FF Tifa 2 Resin is Â£50 online but Â£40 at Expo, Tifa Action figure was Â£1 cheaper. To-Hearts statues were Â£2~Â£3 cheaper, Kanu was Â£1 cheaper, Girls Bravo & many gashapon's were between Â£2~Â£4 cheaper. All caps & cosplay caps were Â£2~Â£3 pounds cheaper!

Remember we gave many free pocky away to customers who bought more than x2 items & also you save on P&P. Some customers even got bulk discounts

Some items were more expensive, they were generally the latest items or items which we had very low stock off. The aim was to not lose all our most popular items before Sunday. Because imagine the disappointment for those coming and no stock for them.

Also keep in mind we are generally cheapest at Expos for anime toys. So it would actaully be very silly of us to sell soming for our online price of Â£120... if other stall keepers are selling it for Â£175 at Expo! We have resisted and stick to our online price even though we know its vastly cheaper, simply because we want the item to be within the reach of as many people as possible! For example, other stall keepers where selling Squall for Â£25! We could have sold him for Â£24, but no we kept him exactly at the website price of Â£20! Even tho hes just released, we have plenty of stock for everyone and hence we keep it good value.

Customers who bought more than one item gnerally were offered the limited stock items at website prices.

Also remember we have to recover our costs such as, outfits the girls wear, sponsorship cost, travel, food & stall cost.

2. Only a few of our items had prices.
Please remember we are a online store and therefore we don't usually price our products. We try our best to price them before the show. But as you can see we carry so much range we only just about completed set up before the doors opened... then we had no item at all to price.

Another reason we don't generally price... is that at Expo's we are busy serving customers & chatting with customers... we don't have time to 'stall stalk' other sellers checking out their prices. Hence with prices on we are at an disadvantage as everyone else can drop theirs without us knowing!

What we do at most Expos is bring a print-out of our website prices and tell customers, "This is how much normally online, today for you it's YYY price. This honest approach is understood by customers and many return knowing they will get a great deal.

At future events we will price items before getting to Expo so we don't have to rush around looking for tags & markers like frenzy! If someone offers it cheaper don;t be scared to ask to see if we are able to match it. I am confident we are usually the cheapest. However don't confuse 'bargin price' for "We have to drop it right down just to get rid of it as we can't seem to move anymore units". In such situations we can't match their price as it would result in a loss.

3. We did not get to chat with you.
Expo is very different to all the others we attend, especially this one! We were constantly serving customers and our stall had queues of x4 deep customers! The gang way was always blocked hence customers were not able to get to the Pocky and did not have time to study the expensive resins sad.gif

We had to keep chit-chat to an absolute minimum, please keep in mind from our position we could see how frustrated other customers where, waiting as we chatted with the customers at the front of the counter. Hence if we cut a conversation short... it was because we could see many people behind you frustrated as they waited to buy their anime! Some actaully got fed up and walked away

I saw a post on another forum were someone complained about our poor management. In our defence we had no idea we would be this popular, if we knew we would had brought more staff. It seems we are victims of our own success... but we will learn & improve! Hai!

The best time to come for at chat is at the very end of Expo. Or visit us at smaller events where we have plenty of time to chat about our favourite animes!

4. I did not get my shirt signed.
Again we were just too busy. Every moment we spent away from the stall with regular customers, there was about 20 very frustrated people waiting to be served. Some even walked away as they did not want to wait! We sincerely apologies to anyone who was unhappy with our service sad.gif

We are looking at ways to improve our service, ie, more staff, getting an extra x2 tables, pre-sign shirts before event.

Phew, i think thats it all!

We are now planning Octs Expo. Expect more Coco & all new Kiki merchandise, for now we will keep it all a secret happy.gif Right now we are planning somthing anime fans would love! But being about to arrange it is another matter!

Please feel free to leave feedback as it will help us improve our serve for everyone!

Members may also be interested to know we will stock ADV & MVM Anime DVD's in July.

Arigato!

Hideki ^^

Shiro Yui · 31 May 2006

I did post this before but I found out that you canâ€™t access my space unless youâ€™re a member so they are now available at:
http://spaces.msn.com/wingzero205/

I took a few photos but Iâ€™m no photographer so forgive me for amateur shots (they were taken on my mateâ€™s phone).

Also, if you are/know any of these people in these pictures, thanks for your co-operation and get in touch.

ledric · 31 May 2006

Pics FTW

I've posted some pics up online, not great quality (for some reason the Masquerade ones came out *really* dark)... they're here, anyone else take any while they were there?

(Unfortunately I was borrowing someone else's camera, so I didn't get to take loads... i'll be taking my own cam for October's event)

sonia_leong · 31 May 2006

Expo isn't quite the same as an Anime Convention, there aren't really any fun sociable events like quizzes and games, it's a bit more commercial. But it's cheap to get in, with lots of stuff to buy, a place to sit and chill (artists/manga Alley, whoo!) and wasn't too hard to get to - so at least it's easy to meet up with people and look at the cosplayers. ^_^

It's a good place for artists too, we have a large amount of prizes to give away, around about Â£300 worth per winner!

The October expo is something I particularly look forward to, as the Expo party tends to be very fun with lots of costumed guests.

And of course, next year there will be JapanEx, a new event entirely devoted to anime/manga, and japanese pop culture.

Obsessed Shanks Lover · 31 May 2006

i'm impressed..i have afew box's of pocky's left! i brough **** loads of 'em :lol:

Ichigo-Chan · 31 May 2006

The Expo this year was quite cool, though I'm sorry that I never had the time to talk to many people from this forum this year, I saw JAKEMAN who gave me my badge, also I was suppose to meet up with Neon-noir, but I was an idolt and never heard my phone ring.
Also it was cool to see some of yous in the hotel though I never spoken to yous properly. Lol, the twister game was fun, though I never played. Watching you lot play with my little (well... big) group of NERVites was so funny.

Shiro Yui · 2 June 2006

ive added 2 more photo's from the London Expo 2006 available at:
http://spaces.msn.com/wingzero205/

Dont forget to get in touch if it youre in them.

Ichigo-Chan · 1 July 2006

SailorCalibur · 2 July 2006

Those pics are great tho i saw them on your forum which might i say i joined and i like it ^^

Arbalest · 2 July 2006

well i'm planning on getting the weeks of work when the expo is on in october..so i should be there at the next one, i could beat ya all on SSBM which will be nice

. i was disappointed that i couldn't go to this one since the exams where on.

Mutsumi · 2 July 2006

Arbalest said:
i could beat ya all on SSBM which will be nice

You could, but I don't think a certain tie-wearing gorilla is going to let you.

Shafutard · 3 July 2006

Awesome pics Strawberry. I particularly liked

1) Haruhi bunny girl (was that Insane Lampshade?)
2) Dalek beats everything.
3) Sonic Screwdriver lifts up girls skirt. I want one now.

Your thoughts and impressions of the London Expo

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