What to Do When a Nearby Booth Sells Something Similar

You get your booth assignment, walk the floor during setup, and there it is: someone two tables down doing a very similar style to yours, maybe even the same fandom, same medium, same general price point. Your stomach drops a little. This happens to almost everyone eventually, and it feels worse in the moment than it actually plays out over the course of the show.

First, it's rarely as identical as it feels

In the panic of noticing it, everything about their table can start to feel like a direct copy of yours, even when a closer look shows real differences: different color palette, different line style, different price tier, different specific fandoms or subjects. Before you spiral, actually walk over and look properly. Chances are the overlap is more surface-level than it first seemed.

If it genuinely is very close to your work

Sometimes it really is close. Same aesthetic, same subject matter, similar products. A few things that actually help:

• Lean harder into what makes your specific work yours. Your linework, your color choices, your personal spin on a subject, whatever it is, make sure your signage and display put that front and center instead of assuming people will just notice.
• Don't discount out of panic. Dropping your prices to "compete" with the table nearby almost never works the way you hope, and it trains that customer base to expect lower prices from you specifically going forward.
• Talk to the organizer if it feels like an actual policy issue, some cons do have rules limiting how many vendors selling extremely similar licensed content get placed near each other. Most of the time it's simply how the floor plan landed.

Resist the urge to be cold to them

It's tempting to freeze the person out, but you're going to be sitting three feet from them for the next eight-plus hours, possibly for the whole weekend. A tense booth neighbor situation is exhausting on top of an already long day. Most artists who've been doing this a while will tell you the better move is to just be normal and friendly. You might find out they're dealing with the exact same nerves about it from their side.

Sometimes it actually helps both of you

Two booths with adjacent, similar work can create a mini destination in that part of the row, shoppers interested in that style get to compare and often buy from both instead of choosing one. This is a real dynamic in artist alleys, not just a nice thing to tell yourself. A cluster of similar tables draws a crowd that a single isolated table might not.

What this isn't worth doing

• Complaining about it publicly online during or after the show. It reads worse for you than for them and can burn bridges with organizers or other vendors watching.
• Redesigning your whole product line overnight to differentiate. Reactive changes made in a panic rarely look intentional, and you don't have to prove anything to anyone at your own table.
• Assuming they copied you specifically. Parallel thinking happens constantly in art, especially within the same fandoms and trends. It's almost never personal.

Your customers came for you specifically, too

Remember that anyone who already knows your work, from social media, from a past show, from a friend's recommendation, is coming to your table regardless of who's next to you. The overlap mostly affects cold foot traffic making a split-second choice, and that's a much smaller slice of your sales than it feels like in the moment of noticing a similar booth nearby.

Curious what a Shapeshift kit actually looks like in person? Head to the Artist Booths homepage to see the full lineup and find the one that fits your table.