Interview with Jeff Rocen of Capital Associates

by Louis Vitela

Jeff, under the banner of Capital Associates, has been running comic book shows in the Washington, DC area for the last thirteen years.

Jeff Rocen looks younger than his thirty-four years with his backwards ball cap, clean-shaven face, and t-shirt and jeans. Yet when we sat down in a corner of the Dunn Loring, Virginia Volunteer Fire Department’s convention room he was confident and self-assured, happy to spend half an hour sharing some of his history and Capital Associates’ story with ComicCritique.Com. Jeff, under the banner of Capital Associates, has been promoting and running comic book shows in the Washington, DC area for the last thirteen years. The interesting thing about Jeff is how his business sense touches every part of his life. Even when he discusses his avocation of fronting a DC-area punk band he sagely notes the gigs where they'll sell the most CDs and t-shirts. This interview was conducted at the June 12, 2005 Capital Associates show, where the guest of honor was Sal Buscema, who appeared on behalf of ACTOR. (At the time of this publication, the next bi-monthly Capital Associates show is August 14, 2005.)

How long have you been doing this?

We did our first show — now I say “we” because I had a partner at the time — I’ll answer your question first. Fourteen years.

Is this your day job?

It was for a period of time. We were doing three shows a month when we started it up in 1992. July 1992 is our first event, so I guess thirteen years.

Always in the DC area?

Yes, and some Baltimore.

When we started it off in 92 we were trying to make it more of a full time gig, we tried expanding to other areas than the DC area. We were doing so well. We’re talking about the mid-nineties when the whole Image thing was just blowing up. We would have 700 people, 800 people a day at the show. We were selling 80 vendor booths and had people on a waiting list to get in.

Sal Buscema focuses on a sketch he draws for a fan. Sal appeared on behalf of ACTOR. (click image to view full-size)

Now it didn’t start that way, we had to build it up. But I’d say by 94-ish… I’ll tell you what it was: May of 1993 I brought Stan Lee into a show. Stan Lee obviously had a huge crowd and I only had a one day event — it was like 10 to 6, it was a long show — and he only signed for about two hours, but for the day I had about 1500 people, which for a one day show was huge. That was only a year into me doing this, not even a year. And he was a great guy to hang out with. Nice guy.

Anyway, probably the first three years, one event, Tysons Corner. this has been our staple event, I had a partner at the time, a guy that I grew up with, good friend of mine, and we decided to start this up. Our background was setting up as vendors at ball card shows. that’s my background.

Basically we’re in high school, we’re setting up on the

“May of 1993 I brought Stan Lee into a show. Stan Lee obviously had a huge crowd and I only had a one day event and he only signed for about two hours, but for the day I had about 1500 people, which for a one day show was huge.”

weekend at ball card shows. So our background is not comics; our background was studying other conventions and critiquing promoters. This guy’s doing a good job with this, they could be doing this better. Eventually we got to college and we thought, “we can do this.” At the time the ball card market was getting saturated. We weren’t even enjoying the act of collecting them anymore. And there were so many ball card shows, it was just like, what else can we do? We understand the concept [of doing shows], what else can we do?

A buddy of mine, Sean Donahue, who’s actually overseas right now in Afghanistan, owned a shop called Jolly Rogers in Arlington. A shop that he and two other partners bought from somebody else as Jolly Rogers, and they maintained it for about 10 years. My buddy Sean from college, he came to me and said, do comic book shows.

There were four other promoters at the time (1991) when we started looking into it. I started going to shows to research, seeing what kinds of vendors and the quality of vendors, and I saw that the market is so different from baseball card shows. Baseball card shows seem so high-end business because there’s so much money changing hands, high end autograph guests where you actually paid for autographs. I found initially you weren’t doing that at comic book shows. The onus was on the promoter to adjust everything to compensate for what you’re paying for the artist. Whereas baseball card shows at the time (this is around 1991) you’re paying thirty bucks for a McGuire autograph or fifty bucks for a Canseco autograph, [and the stars are] signing right there. That concept did not exist in comics. The promoter had to work out his pricing scheme so it was free autographs. The artist did not want the perception that they were charging. That was totally different for us. We’re paying this guy $3,000 to come in and we can’t charge? So we had to increase table prices this much, and I’m going to draw the extra crowd [by having a celebrity sign autographs]. So you change the business model.

“I think my success with my vendors is part of what makes the show succesful.”

What did you see other comic show promoters doing that you were going to improve on?

Marketing. Customer relations. I know everybody in here (waves his hand to indicate all the vendors). There are customers that have been coming to my show for thirteen years. I know them by name, I know what they buy. I can’t speak for them, and I’m biased, but I think they look at me as a good guy, as straight forward guy. I’ve had a few problems over the years, anybody’s going to. But I think my success with the vendors is part of what makes the show succesful.

Can I ask how old you are?

I’m 34. So I started this when I was 21. I saw so many opportunities with the other shows being run so poorly that I didn’t think it would take long —

But they were still getting customers.

They were getting customers, but they were not getting a lot of customers. What kept them around was they were bringing in money customers. They might only have a hundred people come for the day but a lot of those were old time comic book customers who were spending good money. But there was a whole market of all the new books that were coming out, all the Image stuff and Dark Horse, and all that was all coming out early and mid-nineties and you had to tap into that crowd too. And we’ve certainly been riding a lot of trends over the years, too. We had vendors putting up Beanie Babies. We rode the trend. That brought in a very different demographic. But you know what there was a period of time that Beanie Babies brought in another hundred or two hundred customers a show. That lasted for a year and a half and why anybody would pay 500 dollars for a stuffed animal, you got me, but you know, they did it.

Someone could say the same about an old issue of Captain America

Absolutely. You want to spend a thousand dollars on one baseball card? To each his own.

Are you all done with the sports cards?

I have not done sports cards in years. I never even did sports cards at my shows.

How did Americon go last year?

Not quite as succesful as I wanted it to, which is why it’s not going on any more. I think partially it was doing it in Gaithersberg, MD. I have done Gaithersberg — we did it for three years. When we were doing three comic book shows a month we did Gaithersberg. We stopped doing it because the numbers kind of peaked around 300 customers a month. At that time I was getting 700 to 800 here. Gaithersberg wasn’t bad. Over the years I did Baltimore for three years, and I did Towson. Similar situation there, getting 250 to 300 customers, selling about 55 vendor spaces. I also did Springfield, VA, for about three years, similar story. That was when comics were very, very hot. It was a flooded market, a lot of stuff was coming out that at the time was really hot but now you can’t sell for a nickel. So for that period we were able to sustain three shows. It probably taxed my Tysons show a little but, but we were trying to expand because we were trying to see if we could make it more of a full time gig.

“…A lot of stuff was coming out that at the time was really hot but now you can’t sell for a nickel.”

Do you have a sense that your show helps the industry at all?

I’d like to think it does.

Who’s your competition right now?

The stores, but I don’t like to think of them that way. Because they’re my vendors as well, and I’ll support them. I think I’ve got a pretty good relationship with most of the shops. I’ve got fifty stores passing out my flyers in the area. I don’t do shows on Saturdays, unless it’s an extreme situation where I can’t get a Sunday date. Over thirteen years I’ve probably done five Saturday shows, and I don’t like to because that’s a big day for the shops, and I’m not trying to compete with them, I’m trying to help them. At the same time they’re helping me because they’re passing flyers out to all their customers. I’ve probably got ten local shops that are setting up in here [today]. So I don’t like to look at them as competition. Because I’m one day a month — and now I’m one day every two months — I’ve cut back to six times a year. So I don’t really look at myself as being competition for them. I mean technically yes I am, but I think moreso we create a year-round interest.

And there’s no other central gathering place for afficionados.

Yes, and to be honest, I wish I could do more, and I’ve tried. During the hot Magic years, trying to have tournaments, trying to have more community at the show. But it never — that’s not my specialty. And I probably brought the wrong people in to do the tournaments for me, and I probably didn’t have as much control over it as I should have had. At least for the first couple of tournaments I should have had more control to see how things are running. It didn’t turn out to be succesful. I’ve tried it twice, and the guys I chose didn’t do a good job. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked out.

But I do have some local comic book clubs that come here every other month now, so I do have some community type atmosphere.

I’ll say this. Let’s say I had to stop the show. There’d be six hundred people a month that would say, "Jeff — what are we going to do now?" Obviously I don’t break the bank doing these shows. I do it more because it’s a fun thing to do.

Is it profitable?

It’s profitable. I wouldn’t do it on a volunteer basis, or break even. I do make money at it, but that’s because I’m giving an opportunity for a lot of guys to make money at it here too. And I’m providing an atmosphere for all the customers to come into a room where they’ve got sixty, seventy vendor tables (on average two tables per vendor), so you’ve got about 30, 35 vendors competing for the customer’s dollar. And the customer can look at it as, I’m going to go into a room, and if I find the same item at five tables I can use leverage. It’s a true marketplace. So the customer comes here, they’ll drop their three dollars at the front door because they’ve got an opportunity to get the best deal on an item. Where if I go to one store I may not get that. Especially back in the Image days, when you had fifteen vendors in the room carrying the same books.

After all this time doing the shows, have you gotten into the comic scene a little bit?

That’s a good question. The part of it that I enjoy the most is the artists and the artwork. I like original art. I collect animation cells. I don’t have a lot of that at these shows. I do have a lot of original artwork [here], so whenever I bring artists in, I like to get a piece. That’s something unique. I enjoy that aspect. I’ve got a lot of framed animation cells on my wall at home. Any TV show or movie that I had for some nostalgic reason I had a tie to as a kid, I want to make sure I had a couple of cells from each. So a lot of those artists aren’t around. Comic strip like stuff. I haven’t gotten into some of the newer stuff. I do prefer the older superhero stuff, whereas today’s books are very graphic as far as sexual content or violence, and I see that’s selling a lot of books. I don’t necessarily agree with that trend, but hey it’s capitalism, whatever’s selling, you want to make money. Obviously the publishers are looking at it going, “I’ve got focus groups, and this is what’s selling, and that’s the book we’re going to put out.” So I get more involved in the guys who are setting up at my show.

You mean the local creators?

Local guys — I’ve always had a table for the local guys, because I want to push that. A lot of guys who were doing my show ten years ago that were local went on to do bigger stuff. When I bring in a Stan Lee — and I haven’t done that in years — when I bring in a Stan Lee where I also have local guys setting up, it’s like my band opening for a larger band, getting exposure in front of all these fans.

Where did you get your business sense?

I think I didn’t ever want to work for somebody else when I grew up. I haven’t grown up yet! But going back to my ball card background, I was setting up at conventions when I was fifteen. I had my parents drop me off. And as soon as my old business partner, Greg, as soon as we were able to drive — Greg had his license about six months before I did — we were driving the east coast and the mid-atlantic region setting up at shows. Before that we were mowing lawns. We never wanted to have to ask anyone for money. We undrestood the value of a dollar and wanted to earn it on our own. As kids it was always, what can we do to make a dollar? Even now, I’ve got my hand in seven different things. Because I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I’m still in a punk band...

That’s great, what do you play?

I’m the front man. I play bass and guitar at home, but I just write the music at home and then on stage I’m a straight front man, I’m all about the entertainment factor.

Do you play out?

We do. We had an unfortunate situation with our bass player, he had an aneurism about six months ago and passed way. We are adjusting right now, and a good friend of mine is filling in, and we’re playing our first gig on July 22nd.

Wow, very sorry to hear that.
But good luck with the gig. Where’s that going to be?

Waldorf. Our core audience is younger, 15 to 22. We’re a punk band, so we’re playing a Christian Youth Center in Waldorf, and we’ll pull in 250, 300 kids. And we’ll sell off thirty to forty shirts and thirty to forty CDs. Whereas if I play dive bars, which I love playing them, it’s more like twenty five to fifty people show up, and you’ll sell two or three CDs, maybe a shirt. So, in order to get your name out there to your core audience, it’s better to play all the underage shows. Those shows don’t come by as frequently as the bar gigs, so we’ve kind of focused more recently on just playing the underage gigs. Mostly originals, a couple of covers.

This is not a gig you organized, right?

Somebody else organized this, it’s a regular Friday night show.

During the week, Monday through Friday, what do you do?

Marketing. I got my MBA about a year ago. I’ve been marketing, obviously the comic show is marketing, and I worked in marketing data analysis, basically figuring out how succesful ad campaigns work. I work for a set of retirement communities, they’ve got about fourteen or fifteen campuses across the country, and I work on marketing for about seven of the communities.

Like it?

It’s a good experience. I don’t like corporate gigs because I like to be in control in the work environment. Previously I consulted. this is my first full-time gig, I’ve had it for a year and a half. I’m 34, prior to this I’ve never had what could be called a full time job. Now, I worked 40, 50, 60 hours a week, but I was a consultant, a contractor. I didn’t have to answer to their corporate policy so much. But this time I took on a full time job and yeah I gave up a lot of control, and I don’t make as much as I used to, but it’s a shorter commute and it’s a good experience.

What motivated the change?

The commute. I was driving an hour and a half [one way]. I was making better money but it was wreaking havoc on my car and my mind. Now I’ve got a fifteen minute drive. Yeah I’m making less money but I can deal with it for a while. And I have a real estate investment on the side. the last two years I’ve been looking for a bar or restaurant. If that comes, that’ll become my full time gig.

Any advice for ComicCritique.Com readers who say to themselves, “I can do a comic book show?”

It’s interesting for me because don’t forget I didn’t come into it from a comic background. It’s tough for me to say. I think you should know your product, but my product is a service. I’m a promoter.

That’s as good advice as any, “My product is a service.”

I’m a marketing guy. I’ve seen unsuccesful promoters come in as stores, mail order guys — they’ve been setting up at their own shows. And their main focus, instead of on the customers and the other vendors, is making money for themselves. That was one of my biggest selling points initially: the customers are coming here to spend money on your [the vendor’s] books. We’re not going to put ourselves in the prime location in the room and make sure they see us first. We’re not here to compete with the other vendors, we’re here to make money for vendors. You’ve got to show the vendors you’re working for them.