March 18, 2016
News for YourMiniCon - Maine 2016:
YourMiniCon cancels Maine event
by Patrick Delahanty, Executive Producer, AnimeCons.com and FanCons.com
After cancelling ten conventions in the last two months, YourMiniCon has now cancelled their event in Portland, Maine (also known as "Super Sentai Ranger Con"), the only remaining event other than their original Connecticut location.
YourMiniCon posted on Facebook stating:
To address concerns expressed by our fans about the status of our event in Maine, we would like to explain what is going on. We had contracted all of the guests through a single agency that asked for exclusive rights to represent any guests at the event. We signed contracts, and outlined a marketing plan for promotion almost a year ago.
We allotted a four month period of promotion before any deposits were due on those guests, and proceeded to announce the guests and push the event back in November of 2015. A decent amount of interest was generated, and we had recently been to the Portland, ME area in October to put up simple flyers at local comic and gaming shops.
In January, Groupon reached out to us about our events and we launched several deals for our events. To date, four Groupon vouchers for Maine have been purchased. Four out of an allotted eight thousand.
We printed 11x17 posters up featuring the guest list, some of the specialized vendors and artists, and all of the event information at the beginning of February. We had plans to distribute them around the New England area along with talking with shop owners and fans in the region.
Since early sales were not quite where we had estimated they would be, the agency representing our guests pulled their active support and contacted their guest list. They informed each of their guests that they are welcome to attend, and if still interested to contact us. However, they did not give any contact information to those guests.
We have since been in communication with other agencies who represent the guests we had listed to negotiate new contracts for appearance. However, it seems that somehow the information was made public before we had a chance to clear up any contract issues.
While we knew that a few had indicated they would no longer attend, we wanted to try and negotiate new terms for their appearance before pulling them from the website.
With Lexington Toy Con having passed and several of the guests who had withdrawn from our event indicating to fans of our event that they were not currently attending anymore, we feel that we had to address the issue.
As of today, 63 days out from the event, we are cancelling Super Sentai Ranger Con. We will contact anyone due a refund with an estimate on when those refunds will be issued. I want to thank the few fans and vendors who signed up for their support, but we had misgivings months ago with low sales and we should have cancelled it then.
In January 2015, YourMiniCon held its first event in Connecticut. By late 2015, they had planned to expand to a dozen events across the United States. In January 2016, they announced that six of those conventions would be cancelled. A month later, four more were cancelled.
After the last round of cancellations, YourMiniCon's William Case told Nerd & Tie that they were attempting to refocus on the East Coast and they had realized they tried to expand too quickly after the Nevada show had "practically nonexistent sales".
As with previous cancellations from YourMiniCon, it is expected that refunds will be issued if you were one of the few people that pre-registered.
