Convention Report: Further Confusion 2025
Furries of the Silicon Valley
I’ve yet to get into the Con Seller portion of this newsletter, so let’s begin with my first show of the year, Further Confusion. I’ll cover some basic information about the show, some personal thoughts on the show and my business, my costs, profits, and then some pros and cons. We’re going into my 11th year of vending at shows, so I’ll be sharing my perspectives as a fairly seasoned veteran of these things.
For 2025, Further Confusion took place in San Jose, California at the McEnery Convention Center. Its last recorded attendance numbers from 2024 have it at 5.2k attendees, making it the 7th largest Furry Convention in the world. 2025 numbers may shift that around, but I’d be surprised if it went beyond that 6-7th place range.
This was my first year attending Further Confusion. Unlike Anime and Comic cons, Furry cons tend to have their apps go up earlier and with far more organization, so I’ve missed out on applying the past few years. Thankfully I applied in time for once! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but with my niche of paleo art being niche even at shows like this, I knew I’d do well. I expect most Furry cons I attend to be among my best, even considering the lower attendance numbers on average compared to other shows. One day I’ll go over show demographics and how it plays out in sales, but not today.
In the past few years I’ve noticed sales of higher ticket items trending down, with this last year taking a hard nose dive. Where I could barely keep my backpacks ($65, down from $80) and pillow plush ($40) in stock before, they’ve moved at a sluggish pace. I’ve nearly sold out of my current stock of both and I’ll likely be retiring them, sort of. For backpacks, they’ll likely come back if/when the economy improves and people have more disposable income again, as I do enjoy them. They have a fairly big con of being very heavy and space consuming, but I never needed to bring more than 1-3 of each design. Pillow plush will come back, but most likely in a smaller, more affordable size. Half the size, half the price, and hopefully making room for highly requested designs that I haven’t had space for previously.
Despite this trend, I actually managed to sell quite a few of each of these items at FurCon. I had a paleontologist buy one for storing his tools when he’s in the field, which was a huge highlight of the show for me. The people who actually do the work legitimizing me and enjoying what I do is always a huge ego boost! I also have people trying to get me in touch with the Natural History Museum of LA to attend their Dino Fest, which I’d love to do. We’ll see what comes.
Smaller items did well as normal, with keychains and stickers making up the bulk of my sales. My scrunchies moved slower, but my anecdotal observation of the attendee base at FurCon being much more masculine than other shows probably played into this. I also came to the show with 15 reusable sticker books and have returned home with just 1. Because of the popularity of stickers, and the general anxiety people have around actually using them, I find that giving people a place to store all of them safely has been a good move. They’re not popular items among other artists either, so I anticipate them continuing to be hot sellers. If one of your primary items is stickers, I highly suggest you look into sticker books.
Overall I enjoyed my time at FurCon and will likely apply for the next year. Now, let’s get into some more hard numbers.
Costs:
Costs for me are basics such as travel (hotel, flight, Uber/Lyft), and table and badge fees. I will include the cost of merchandise restocks for transparency here. I tend to not wrap them up into one show as merchandise will be sold across multiple shows, rather than just the one I ordered before. Still, I want to make things clear, so everybody has a greater picture of what to expect.
Flight: $171.56
Hotel: N/A
Uber/Lyfts: $137.39
Table + Badge: $160 + $85
Total: $553.95
Sticker restock: $330.67
Keychain restock: $344.61
Total: $675.28
I thankfully had a good number of flight points saved up from the past year that allowed me to cover the cost of my flight to California. I had to purchase extra points to cover my flight back home, but it’s much lower than you’d normally expect these days. I had no hotel costs as I have a relative who lives in the area and was kind enough to host me. That did give me a good bit in Lyft fees, but it’s far lower than you’d expect for a hotel for sure. FurCon’s table and badge fees are also extremely reasonable.
I purposely tried to restock only my main essentials for this show (keychains and stickers) as I had plenty of stock of my other items, or they were items I wanted to retire and was fine to not replenish. My sticker restock consisted of 21 designs and a total of 525 stickers, and my keychain restock consisted of 22 designs at a total of 115 charms.
Overall I was able to keep my costs for this show low. Maybe overall these costs seem extremely high, but that’s mostly in the cost of merchandise (which is low compared to when I have to do more thorough restocks). My travel, table, and badge were on the lower end of the average that I’ve come to know.
Now, how much did I make? When adding together my card payments (which includes tips) and cash, we get $3325 (subtracting $100 for the floating amount I keep for change). I was hoping to hit $4-5k, but after Friday I found that my sales dipped dramatically. The bulk of my money was made on Friday, a huge dip on Saturday, and then a slight rise on Sunday. This is highly unusual in my experience, as Saturdays are usually your best days. I’m not sure what was going on that caused this, but it was noticeable. Still, I made a decent amount. When I calculate for my net profit, I’m left with $2771. Not bad for a weekend!
So, pros and cons. Let’s begin with the cons, as they were few, but stuck in my craw.
The first was the loading dock on Thursday. In all my time doing shows, I’ve never had an experience like this. It was requested that all vendors come through the loading dock, as the con center had forbidden us from wheeling anything through, even suitcases. Usually, if you have wheeled suitcases, you’ll be allowed to get in without trouble, while hand carts and vehicles will need to access the loading dock. However, even suitcases were forbidden at this show, and thus we had to use the loading dock. It was extremely slow, as there were only 3 union workers for the 100+ individual vendors, and you couldn’t roll your own suitcases through. I’ve literally never had this happen before, and the disorganization and glacial pace made check in very unpleasant. Thankfully for check out, we were able to leave ourselves.
This is truly my only con, but it was noticeable. Staff were trying their best to deal with the union folks, and I appreciate them immensely. I truly had no other issues at this show and found that all other aspects were done smoothly and professionally.
So, what were the big pros? Well, no hotel cost! I haven’t been able to do a show in California since 2016, and it was nice to see family before and during while I was there. I’m originally from the Bay Area, so it felt familiar and comfortable to be there. Aside from that, the usual vibes of Furry Cons being highly welcoming and relaxed were great. I had one of my friends (Eli Benik) tabling next to me, and got to make friends with my other neighbor, Max (of Dead Bomb Art), who was super pleasant all weekend.
Sometimes you do these shows and don’t really talk to your neighbors since you’re both busy. Sometimes they’re annoying and you just deal and hope to never see them again. It’s always nice when you have great ones who you want to run into later.
I have nothing else of note, other than to say that Furry Cons continue to have the best organization, staff, attendees, and overall vibes of any type of show I do. They treat their artists humanely (imagine), rather than as a check so they can keep sucking money from attendees. There’s a lot of love in these shows and you can feel it in everybody. I continue to hope I do more every year, and while my luck isn’t always on my side, here’s hoping I can try some others this year.
Overall, highly recommend Further Confusion if you have the type of work that will cater to the very specific crowd present, and I hope to do it again next year.