Rock & Royalty at ComFest 2011!

I hope everyone is having a great summer! ComFest gave me a renewed interest in continuing forward with Rock & Royalty. I took a break from my little side business since last summer, but the excitement around it at ComFest has given me the motivation to get back to business.

I've done a total of 3 large festivals over the last 3 years. I had applied to ComFest the previous 2 years and never had any luck getting in. With over 200 booths each year in the festival, and maybe 1000 applications, the odds  were stacked against new businesses wanting to get in. Then luck would have it that last year at Gahanna's Creekside the director of ComFest visited my booth and was impressed at the set up and product and personally requested my participation at ComFest and other local festivals. It was a pleasure to be a part of the festivities this year. We had a very successful weekend and seeing and hearing everyone's reaction was an amazing thing for me as a designer. It proves that there is a huge interest in the brand and that it is worth investing in again. People were telling me I had the best booth at the festival, posing for pictures with my dress form wearing the Alison Wonderland Couture Tee and Royal Ball TuTu. I also had people telling me that it was the talk around the festival and their friends that they had to come check out the booth. 3 long days of this type of reaction was nothing short of wonderful.

I originally had a larger retail brand in mind when I first started this business. After all, my professional career has been submerged in designing for large retail brands over the past 8 years. But what I've learned that I love most is designing unique product with attention to detail that you just aren't going to get from any mass produced product. This means I spend hours upon hours with a thread and needle, or pliers and jewelry supplies to hand craft each product that I design along the way. I try to buy enough supplies to make multiples between 3 and 6 for each design so if something is successful I can create more. A lot of what I made for the festivals were one-offs, and once I sold it it's gone. I do still have several pieces left that are not on the web. I working on updating the website with the new items and replenishing some items that sold through. I've told people to contact me through email if they remember an item that they would like to custom order. Until then, I'm just posting a few photos of items to give a little newness for the brand.

Long Live Rock.
annie