On Saturday, October 14th, we headed out to CSN Charleston Campus here in Las Vegas to be a vendor at this year's Las Vegas Asian Night Market! This event was the biggest event we've ever been a part of, and it was so much fun!
Las Vegas Asian Night Market is a yearly event that is put on by the Asian Community Development Council of Nevada and OCA Las Vegas. 100% of the net proceeds from ticket sales went into supporting and providing free resources and services for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. If you're a small business owner and a part of this community, I highly recommend looking into these organizations. Being involved with them leads me to awesome opportunities that support my shop. In addition, both ACDCNV and OCA Las Vegas, provide excellent resources to the community in so many different ways. If you're interested in these services and/or want to support, please check them out!
The event went on from 2:00 pm to 11:00 pm. There was an expected turnout of 8,000-9,000 attendees! Compared to other events we've been a part of, this was the largest! This took place in the CSN Charleston campus parking lot. It was a massive space! We were placed between two delicious food vendors, Dilla Manila and O.Onigiri.
From a vendor perspective, the LV Asian Night Market team was really considerate of the needs of the vendors and the preparation for this event! My setup is typically minimal and self-contained, but they provided a tent, a table, chairs, and even a light and power source. For food vendors, refrigeration was also available onsite! (Super cool!)
I made sure to set up my space in the traditional Rocket Bunny theme colors: blue and yellow :D My sister and I attempted to make a "photo-op" type wall in the back of our tent, but the wind came to visit more often than we wanted. Nevertheless, we managed to make an eye-catching piece, with light blue fringe and yellow happy faces :D Paired with my various yellow table covers and kawaii-cute signage, I would say it was super adorable.
Since we had a large enough space, my sister Jackie set up her Sinulid Co. products on one table, and my Rocket Bunny products were on the other. Sinulid Co. is just starting out and she didn't have a lot to sell, but her Tiger mug rugs and ghost crochet coasters attracted a lot of people!
For this event, we brought out a brand new item to the Rocket Bunny product arsenal: bookmarks! I am still super excited about these bookmarks because they helped me solve an issue that most paper product shop owners face: WASTE! As I am transitioning to send out my designs to be printed, I am phasing out materials and moving away from self-manufacturing. The most significant reason for this is because of the process to produce most of my products. Using cutting machines such as Cricut (which I've used since 2016), Silhouette, and other like devices can cause you to end up with lots of paper scraps that you can't really recycle. (Maybe I'll talk about this in another blog!) I was able to use the scraps I've held onto over the past couple years to make bookmarks. Hopefully I'll find another product or two to create out of the rest of my scraps. I try to run my shop as sustainably as possible, so using up what I have will be a huge win!
The bookmarks I made featured my existing illustrations plus one new one. I like the bookmarks because they showcase more of the full illustration that you don't typically get with the stickers. If you follow Rocket Bunny Studio on Instagram, you'll see that my illustrations for my Bun Puns have additional background art, while the stickers just have the Bun Pun by itself. The designs include the Spooky Friends, Maganda, Bunny Toast, Got Rice? Tiger, Bun-ger, and my new Nilla on a Filipino parol.
I loved whenever someone came to buy bookmarks because they were super excited for them! A customer would ask for a particular bookmark and then I'd present them with tassel options. Everyone's eyes would light up with excitement! It was so much fun :D
One new feature of the pop-up shop was a "Fortune Pull". This concept is so fun! If you've ever been to small business markets, you'll sometimes see games of luck such as "Lucky Draws" or "Random Pulls". My version of this is a "Fortune Pull". Although I didn't fashion this as I initially intended, this jist of this is the following: Pull your fortune for $2 a pull. Each fortune strip tells you various fortunes such as "No Fortune" or "Best Fortune" and even "Lucky Fortune". Each "Lucky Fortune" draw wins an associated prize! A few people caught on, and someone actually won the biggest prize during the first-ever pull! (So jealous, lol) I'm working on making this idea cooler and more fun! Come find me at another event and try your luck! I'll have some fun prizes :)
Since this post is getting a little long, I wanted to finish up by touching on the functional decor I came up with for this event! Rocket Bunny Studio has an Event Decor side. I wanted a cute way to display my specials and touch on my decor counterpart, so I came up with my "Pennant Specials". I drew up a template for each pennant and then drew out each type of special I planned for the event. After printing and cutting out each special, I hole-punched each pennant and strung them onto a ribbon. The pennant banner hung above my main product table. I thought this was a cute but functional piece of decoration to add to my event setup!
For a first time experience at such a large-scale event, I would say it was a success for my small shop! This event helped me see what visually attracts people to a shop. It also helped me identify what types of products people are likely to buy and not buy. We're on a mission to participate in more events in the future. We hope that with every event, we learn how to make the shop even better!
If you know of any events or would like Rocket Bunny Studio at one of your events, please email me at leah@rocketbunny.studio! I'd love to add another pop-up to our calendar. :)
Coming up in another post: Event decor and set up! Please make sure to subscribe to this blog using the form at the bottom of this page. I'll post all of our latest updates here. See you again soon!
LV Asian Night Market Photo Highlights!
