JAFAX and the Exclusivity Clause

[vuduman]

I apologize for the long post. I would cut it down with an LJ-cut tag, but this is too important to my life to hide away.

I love travelling to JAFAX (the Japanese Animation, Film and Art eXpo - www.jafax.org). At the Grand Valley State University campus in Allendale, Michigan (near Grand Rapids by Chicago), it has been a fun and free 2-day event. It's like a convention, but technically an expo. And in respect to them I always refer to it as an "expo" or "event". You can see debates over the term "convention" on their forums. Fast Food Anime has been at the past few JAFAX events and had a great time. The staff has consistently been helpful and prompt and we have had a positive relationship over the years. Since I started attending JAFAX, the staff has been openly inviting of bootleg products primarily because one of their sponsors carry them en masse. But now a few things are changing for their June 24-25, 2006 event.

A few months ago Mark, the Retailer Contact for JAFAX sent all of last year's retailers a letter notifying us that changes would be made to the retailer expectations. (Since this is a free event, the staff requests donations be made in lieu of money for table space and does not have a formal contract like is industry standard.) I will quote the pertinent parts below, but you are welcome to read the letter in its entirety (.PDF). (Names, addresses and phone numbers have been blacked out for legal compliance.)

Most of the letter is typical for JAFAX and not a deviation from the norm. However, there are three sections that are different. One is the section on the 3-table limit. Another is the long-awaited bootleg compliance. And then there is the "retailer exclusivity."

Up to three tables set aside for you to use at the event.

In the past many retailers have had 4 or 5 tables, including Fast Food Anime. Mark was nice enough to allow us a fourth, so space will no longer be so tight.

We are still in the process of educating our staff to identify “knock off” or bootleg items, so a strict “no bootleg” policy can be enforced in the future. For this reason, we ask that if a domestic release of an item is available to stock that instead of the bootleg/knockoff release, or not stock it at all. Legitimate imported items are always welcome, however. This ban will now include Son May, Ever Anime, and other similar items. We realize this may impact some of our long-standing retailers, and to compensate we will be more vigilant in our efforts to ensure retailer exclusivity, as detailed in the [next bullet-point item]. If bootleg/knockoff items are found or reported at your tables, you will be asked to remove those items.

As much as they say they'll police this, I have a feeling they don't know what they're getting into, especially with their exclusivity clause...

We have limited space for our retailers and try to make sure that we offer as wide a variety of merchandise to those attending JAFAX as possible. It is for this reason that we ask you to limit the product that you bring to the specific items that we ask for, be it CD’s, Videos, Animation Cels, etc. This also eases competition between retailers, as everyone should have a niche to sell to from among our attendees.

It is one thing to invite specific dealers to ensure a broad spectrum of product availability, but to amputate sections of product from certain dealers feels unethical. I sent my concerns to Mark about this and its effect on my yin-yang balance of product. Fast Food Anime carries a large variety of legally-produced and domestically-released items to cover all bases. When one product type does not sell well, another can pick up the slack. DVDs not performing well? Manga'll gain in sales. Key chains doing less than expected? Snacks are there to rescue the day. This ensures that I rarely have a poor day and at minimum I have a decent turnout. And if I'm missing entire product sections, I run a high risk of having the wrong product types for certain situations. Mark responded to these concerns with the following:
"As for your concerns about exclusivity, the past couple of years we have let the idea slide and after last year a retailer who had been with us for a while expressed concerns about the exclusivity no longer being enforced and it was hurting them."
and
"When there is little to no exclusivity to the retailers those that are closer to the main entrance will do better than those who have to be along the far wall and with how the layout of the building forces our retailers area to not be in one easy to transverse room it seems to be in the best interest of all the retailers to go back to this policy of exclusivity."

Fast forward to May 24 when I receive an e-mail with the following:
"I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know after getting everything together with the retailers coming this year I was hoping you could bring the following:
the Japanese snacks, (solid and liquid)
DVD
CD
posters
and toys if you stock them."

Snacks, DVDs and CDs are fine, as I was looking to bring those anyway. Now, posters and toys? I was hoping that merely meant wall scrolls and novelties (plushies, key chains, etc). Noticably absent from the list however are manga. Manga is a solid 25%-35% of my consistent stock, for the overall-sales reason I mentioned earlier. Upon fearing a potential miscommunication, I asked Mark for a retailer list with product types being carried. I was sent the following:
"What other people are bringing:
Wall scrolls
plushies
manga
T-shirts
Specialty print T-shirts
pencil boards
key chains
magnets
cell phone straps
Kimonos
Cosplay items/props
Animation Cels
Japanese art and home decor"

And now any hope of Fast Food Anime stocking manga, plushies, key chains, and wall scrolls at JAFAX has been crushed. This means that over half of my all-legally-produced stock is not allowed at JAFAX. You may notice on every flyer that Fast Food Anime produces, we mention that we carry "DVDs - CDs - Manga - Novelties - Snacks". At JAFAX this changes to "DVDs - CDs - xxxxx - xxxxx - Snacks". And CDs take up a tiny amount of room at my booth. Why? Because there aren't that many CDs available domestically in a legal version. Not nearly as many as manga. Not nearly as many as Great Eastern key chains. (GE makes 90+ key chains just for Naruto!) Do you see what this means? At JAFAX, Fast Food Anime will essentially have two things: DVDs and snacks. For everyone here that has seen our booth setup at conventions, you know just how much variety we offer each and every week. I strive to be extremely easy to work with and accommodating of staff and their hectic workload. But why then do I get slammed with this arbitrary product amputation? This has raised concerns whether or not JAFAX is now worth my time and effort to even attend. But I still will for a few reasons. It should still prove at minimum a decent weekend... Plus I have faith that the staff will see how misguided this policy is and return to some kind of industry standard for 2007.

What do you think? I am interested in seeing how my perspective from this side of the table matches up with yours. What are your perspectives as convention staff, attendees, artists and guests? And for the record, I hate having to raise these concerns in a public forum as the JAFAX staff has treated me well over the years. I have never felt disserviced by an event before (even when staff mislead vendors in past instances), but this is something that the convention-attending public should discuss. With recent concerns among some vendors that vendor rooms are too large with too much competition and there are too many conventions spreading the spending pool out, I would like to know what your perspective is. Please discuss your thoughts here. In the end, this impacts all of us.

- John