We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Albrianna Farnum a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Albrianna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

Both my partner, Nicholas Beni, and I work full-time as well use most of our free time to run our business. It definitely comes with its fair share of challenges and sacrifices. There are times where we’ve worked for over a month straight between both jobs and we can feel it starting to wear on us. The always on the go, not getting much down time, having to forgo family events to work a show and more, all starts to build up to a point of wondering if all of this is worth it. We both at one point have probably agreed that we thought it may not be worth all of this hassle, but it is hard to give up. Getting to meet new people at comic cons is something we thoroughly enjoy. Getting to see all of the cosplayers, seeing other vendors booths and getting to meet the actors makes being a business owner enjoyable. So even though we are not at a point yet where running this business is the only thing we do, I would say I am content with being a business owner that also works another job full-time.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our companies name if Figureheadz Figures and Collectibles LLP, or Figureheadz for short. We started coming up with the idea of our company back in 2017. We started on a small scale with selling on Mercari to see if people had an interest in buying collectibles. The first collectible we started selling was funko pops. After two years we ended up deciding to try and upscale. We were still selling on Mercari but we increased our inventory to be able to support going to small comic cons nearby. After only three shows in, the pandemic hit shutting everything down and changing everything all at once. We went back to prioritizing selling on Mercari until things opened up again. Now we attend various comic cons in the neighboring states getting the opportunity to meet new people and even run into friends again. Products we currently provide our customers are: funko pops, pop protectors, 8×10 top loaders, funko soda, dorbz, sports cards, yu-gi-oh cards, pokemon cards and lorcana. We are working on new projects to introduce this year as well. We are hoping by this summer to have our new lines launched and available to our customers. So make sure to give us a follow at Figureheadz on Facebook and @figureheadzpop on Instagram and Tiktok to see progress on our new projects as well as what shows we will be going to this year. What I am most proud of is how well we work together as a team. We are always working on trying to improve our look and keeping our inventory fresh for our customers as well. We know that in order to try and make this become our only full-time jobs that we need to always be adapting and trying to come up with our next idea.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met nicholas back in 2017 at Fan Expo Boston during a speed dating event. We started seeing each other casually for a little bit before we decided to see each other exclusively. As we got to learn about one another and our pasts he told me a story one day about how him and his friend Ted use to talk about starting a mystery box business together. It would entail making various mystery boxes and selling them at comic cons. When they use to talk about it they didn’t really know if that idea would actually work so it ended up falling to the wayside. But nicholas always had the desire to want to make this business dream a reality one day. So with some money saved up we took the leap of faith and here we are today. We are ever changing our business to try to improve it and we are also planning our wedding next year.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

It’s going to sound a bit cliche but I feel that the most effective strategy for growing clientele is to be yourself and be honest. You cannot build a business-client relationship with people if they feel that you are untrustworthy and don’t treat them with respect. When we are at shows, it doesn’t matter if every person I talk to results in a sale or if it doesn’t. If someone wants to come up and talk about an item we are selling, or even wants to come up just to talk about their favorite anime or actor they are seeing then I will always entertain the conversation. You learn a lot about people when you listen and share with them. And when you are being genuine people can tell and are more apt to converse/shop with you as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.figureheadz.com
• Instagram: @figureheadzpop
• Facebook: Figureheadz
• Other: @figureheadzpop on Tiktok

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me with my device.