We recently connected with Sarah Skrobarczyk and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sarah, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
My first step was to research types of business formations and decide what the new company needed to be. Then I contacted a lawyer and requested to have the new company minted. Once Stardust Entertainment, LLC was born then came learning about websites what one needed to contain what was a good platform, how would we sell tickets and take payments. Lots of research and learning went into our first website. Took about a month to get the finished product up and running. We also set up internal processes and procedures needed to handle basic business functions like who can sign legal documents and how to pay people. Once the basic framework was set out then we started looking for a venue to help make our inaugural anime convention a reality. Once a venue and date was set then the fun stuff began! We started contacting industry folks and celebrities. We learned a lot the first year on how to talk to these amazing people and how to market a convention and the celebrities and events contained within. A little over a year after the company officially started we held the first ever Delta H Con. We learned so much in the first year and have never stopped learning about business and the Anime industry we love being a part of.
Sarah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
While working at NASA I met a coworker with an infectious love of Anime and Anime conventions. She sold my soul on the dream of having an Anime convention here in Houston. I started Delta H Con as a family friendly convention, a place my friends and their kids could come and have fun watching Anime, playing games, and meeting amazing people in industry. Just so happens I did not know any of these amazing friends yet. The last 16 years has been a wonderful journey meeting new amazing people whose love of anime has brought us together. I am most proud of the community that has built up around Delta H Con. Many people come back year after year. I love when I hear people say we are a safe friendly con. Every convention has its own personality built by staff, the types of guests brought in, programming allowed to be hosted, and people who come out to the show. We are certainly not a huge cold grind of a convention. We pride ourselves on being a warm inviting friendly show, never slow and certainly never boring but always willing to stop and listen to what you have to say! If you know you know! If not stop by and check us out we would love to meet you and show you around.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
We sell tickets and merchandise on our website. Originally we explored options like ticketmaster but we found aggregator sites took so much out of every sale. They also restricted us to tickets and we would have had to find another option to sell merchandise as well as exhibitor spaces. There are certainly more third party options that do many or all of the things a convention like us would have needed to start but our website has grown to allow so much. We now have the ability for community panel submissions, exhibitor sales, ticket sales, merchandise sales, as well as community guest request submissions. It certainly helped that at the start we had folks who could code websites. 16 years ago the internet was a vastly different animal to what it is today. Sites like wordpress and wix have increased the ability to make a website without the need of costly coders and long build processes. I think the best pro of having our own website is just that it is our own. The customer information is not hidden from us we can run metrics to help us better understand our customers. But at the same time owning your own website is a con. If it breaks you had better have the team of experts to get it back online certainly there is no big machine like amazon or Etsy to get the platform back functional so you can keep making money. Just have to ask yourself am I willing to spend the time to maintain an independent website or am I good with giving up control to someone else for that part so I can focus on doing other things like making products.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
I believe our most effective strategy for growing our clientele is personally connecting with them. We do a lot of in person marketing at other conventions around the state throughout the year. It is a pleasure when someone stops by and talks to us about the great time they had at the last Delta H. I think its even better when they see we have a table at a show and drag all their friends back to buy tickets for our show 6 to 8 months out. Many of the people they bring to our table have not been to our show but they are excited because their friend had so much fun. Our social media channels are geared in the same fashion. We love talking to our community celebrating with them and crying with them when the times call for it. Consistently showing up as who we are is important to us and I feel that makes Delta H Con a stronger community and a stronger brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://deltahcon.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deltahcon
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeltaHCon/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/deltahcon
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@deltahcon9147/featured
- Other: Tumblr: https://deltahcon.tumblr.com/ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/deltahcon
Image Credits
Kat Kreations and Sarah Skrobarczyk