Mystic Muse opened its first own booth on 24 May 2025, at Illustar Festival 7 in KINTEX. It was an entirely different thing from joining an agency's booth as crew. From start to finish, we planned it, ran it, and answered for the result.
Planning a booth means deciding more than you'd think
We spent a long time discussing how to compose our own booth at Illustar Fes. It was clear that cosplayers had to be at the center of a cosplay crew booth, but the core question was what fans would experience once they arrived.
In the end we built three zones: a merchandise zone for purchases, a gacha zone for random draws, and a crew event zone for meeting cosplayers and taking photos. We designed the flow so each zone ran independently while connecting naturally to the others.
We had ten staff in total, and assigning dedicated people to each zone across two days left us stretched. Even so, running to a plan set in advance, we finished without any zone standing empty or getting tangled.
The tension just before opening on day one
The morning of 24 May, finishing the setup and waiting to open — that stretch is still vivid. Some staff had barely slept, adjusting merchandise layout and gacha setup until late the night before, and the crew were rechecking their costumes. The hall was still quiet, but the area around our booth was unusually busy.
A few people came straight in as we opened, and when one of them said "I've been following this crew and I finally get to see you in person," the tension seemed to drain away at once.
The gacha did better than we expected
When we introduced the gacha zone we weren't sure about it. We worried that running cosplay merchandise as a random draw might feel unfamiliar. Once it opened, though, it drew such a good response from visitors that it became a popular zone with people lining up to draw. Not knowing what would come out pulled people in, and plenty tried two or three times.
In the event zone, meanwhile, cosplayers talked with fans directly and ran photo sessions. Photos taken while chatting naturally, with no set script, seem to have produced the better results. Watching people post their photos to social media on the spot gave us no small amount of satisfaction.
A retweet event carried it online
During the event we ran a social media retweet campaign alongside a visit-review event. When visitors posted a review we responded directly, and winners received merchandise. Review posts kept coming after the event closed, and the response continued online well after the floor had emptied.
Reading through those posts one by one back at the hotel after packing up, it sank in that our first own booth had come to a close. It wasn't perfect and there were regrets. Notes on what to do differently next time piled up. Even so, the experience left us a great deal. It was our first attempt at a booth of our own, so there were gaps — but what we gained in the process will clearly show in how we run things from here.