On this page:

List of Dealers in the Dealers Room

A listing of dealers in the room, as well as those on the waiting list, can be found by using the 'List of Dealers' link found just above this section.

General Information

The Further Confusion 2012 Dealer Room will be located in the Marriott's San Jose Ballroom. We had hoped to be in the Convention Center, but time and money constraints (both in how much the space would cost us, and how much we would have to charge our dealers for tables in same, as well as the cost of electricity) made it clear that we would not be doing that this year. However, the San Jose Ballroom in the Marriott hotel is a wonderful space. As such we are keeping our table prices the same, and we will not have to charge extra for electricity this year. However, we will have five fewer tables this year than last year at the Fairmont.

Dealer Room hours

  Setup (Dealers Only allowed) Business Hours
Thursday
4:30pm - 9:30pm
(no sales on Thursday)
Friday
8:00am - 11:00am
11:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday
9:00am - 10:00am
10:00am - 6:00pm
Sunday
9:00am - 10:00am
10:00am - 6:00pm

The Convention Store will be open the same hours as the Dealer Room, as well as being open Monday January 16th 2012 from 10:00am to 2:00pm for last minute patron/sponsor gifts and convention T-Shirt sales.

Teardown is on Sunday January 15th 2012 from 6:00pm to 9:30pm

There will be no Monday teardown hours this year.

The doors to the Dealer Room will be locked and secured at 9:30pm on Thursday and Saturday nights, and at 7:00pm on Friday and Saturday nights. Once the doors are locked and secured, they will not be opened for anyone. If you leave something in the Dealer Room, you will not be able to retrieve it until the next morning. Please keep this in mind before departing the room for the night.

Hotel Reservations for Dealers

At the time of this writing (12/21/2011) there are still rooms available, but we can't promise that they will last. If you have not already made your reservations, please click here to visit the Hotel Information page.

Membership Badges for Dealers

All Dealers have one (1) membership that came bundled in with their table space. (Those rare dealers that have more than one table have one (1) membership per table purchased.) You will be issued your badge(s) when you check in for your table(s). Anyone else assisting you in sales at your table must also be registered members of Further Confusion 2012 and have a valid membership badge. Dealer assistants will need to claim their badges from main registration, not dealer operations.

Dealer Assistants are not a special type of membership and there is no discount for them. Your assistants need to get their own memberships through the normal membership process, either by pre-registering from the registration part of the Further Confusion 2012 website (which will currently cost $45) or at the convention itself (where the price will go up to at least $50 for a full membership). All assistants must have a paid membership to the convention in order to be present in the dealer room during business hours.

You will need a government issued photo identification (Drivers License, Military ID, Passport, etc) to provide verification of your identity to claim your Badge and Table.

Those persons that purchased a table for the convention will pick up their badge at Dealer Operations inside the Dealer Room (or just outside it, depending on when you arrive). All other badges come from main registration through the pre-registration line or new registration.

When in doubt about where to go for a dealer badge, go to Dealer Operations and we will take care of it for you.

You will be issued one or more 'Dealer Assistant Tags' when you claim your table. These are used to mark your assistants, granting them permission to work at your table and move in and out of the dealer room without you present during setup and teardown hours. These are NOT memberships, they are only dealer room credentials.

CA State Board of Equalization

The tax rate for San Jose is 8.25%. (Yes, this is 1% lower than last year's convention.)

Every person that purchases space to sell from at the convention must have a Sellers Permit from the California State Board of Equalization. Further Confusion can not get this for you. You must get it for yourself. Such Sellers Permits are free. We recommend that you acquire your permit at LEAST two months before the convention, to make sure you can get the number to us by the time you get to the convention. We can not permit you to make any sales at the convention without you providing us with your Sellers Permit number.

For those dealers filing from out-of-state, you may be required by the California State Board of Equalization to also fill out and attach Form BOE-403-B when sending in your Form BOE-400-SPA.

For more information on this, refer to the information included with Form BOE-400-SPA on page 3.

As always, if you have questions about the forms or process related to acquiring a Seller's Permit, contact the California State Board of Equalization's Information Center at 800-400-7115 (AK & HI call 916-445-6362). Word is that you can actually talk to a live person at that number between the hours of 8am and 5pm. If all else fails, call their out-of-state field office at 916-227-6600 or the San Jose field office at 408-277-1231.

They are the final authority on all things related to acquiring the necessary paperwork for us to be able to allow you to sell your merchandise at the Further Confusion event.

Shipping Items to the Hotel

The Hotel section of the website contains a FAQ entry on this subject. You may review that entry by clicking here.

As stated there, you will need to address the package to yourself at the hotel, with the word 'Guest' in parenthesis. The first package appears to be free when sent to either hotel. The Marriott has an additional fee of $10 for each package after the first. Please contact the hotel directly if you have further questions regarding what size constitutes a single package. Also, we do NOT recommend sending them in any manner that will cause them to arrive more than 3 days before the convention. And yes, you MUST have a room reserved in YOUR name at the hotel to ship a package to the hotel and expect to actually receive it.

Examples of Mailing Label

(for the San Jose Marriott)

John Doe Dealer (Guest)
San Jose Marriott
301 South Market Street
San Jose, CA 95113

(for the Hilton San Jose)

John Doe Dealer (Guest)
Hilton San Jose
300 Almaden Boulevard
San Jose, CA 95113

Please, please, please follow these instructions. Not doing so may mean your shipment will be refused, or lost. Neither the hotel nor Further Confusion can be held liable for anything that is improperly shipped or does not follow these instructions.

Remember, the shipping guidelines ONLY apply when shipping to the San Jose Marriott or the Hilton San Jose. To ship to any other hotel you may be staying at, contact that hotel directly for the information pertaining them receiving your packages and what fees they may charge.

Parking

The San Jose Convention Center and our hotels are located in downtown San Jose. As such there is a wide range of parking options. The parking at the hotel (either of them) itself is NOT free.

The San Jose Marriott offers valet parking only for a limited number of vehicles. The current cost is $26.00 for overnight valet parking with in and out privileges; The Hilton San Jose offers self parking for $19 a night and Valet for $24 a night both with in and out privileges: parking rates are subject to change without notice.

There are other options. For more information on the parking options, we strongly recommend visiting the San Jose Downtown Parking website.

The closest parking to the convention is the San Jose Marriott parking or San Jose Convention Center Parking Lot. The SJCC Parking lot is NOT free. It costs $1.00 per 20 minutes, with a current maximum of $20 a day. The website says these rates are for Monday - Friday 6am - 6pm, but my experience so far with parking there on the weekends for the FC Staff meetings is that they charge that during the weekends as well. We have had no word from the convention center about them putting special event rates for our convention. However, there IS another event going on at the Convention Center during our weekend, so no promises.

No Free Shuttle from San Jose Airport

There is NO free shuttle from the airport to convention site. There are many taxi services that may be available from the San Jose Airport to the hotel for around $20 each way. Supershuttle runs at least $15 each way and requires advance reservations. Please make your travel plans for getting from the airport to the hotel and back in advance so you won't have any nasty surprises. Both hotel websites have links to the local transit information.

Lugging your wares into the Dealer Room

Further Confusion 2012 presents some unique challenges in moving your wares into the hotel.

The San Jose Marriott has a limited loading dock available. If you NEED to use a loading dock, please contact us at and we will get specialized information to you. Do NOT use the San Jose Convention Center loading dock. Doing so requires Teamster labor and is only available for the Convention Center facilities, NOT those within the hotel, like our Dealer Room.

By far the easiest way to deal with a large quantity of wares is to use the San Jose Marriott's valet parking. As stated above, this will cost $26 a day and is only available to guests with hotel reservations at that hotel. Be sure to tell the valet that you will need to unload your wares for transport to the San Jose Ballroom, during Dealer Room Load-in hours (Thurs 4:30pm-9:30pm, Fri 8am to 11am). This parking area has a rather limited ceiling height which will NOT accept panel trucks or other trucks requiring clearance above that of a standard van without luggage rack.

The main point is that all function space, with a few exceptions, are on the 2nd floor of the hotel and the convention center. So if you unload your wares yourself in the front arrival area of the hotel, you will be moving your wares using the standard passenger elevators.

The hotel does NOT permit use of its rolling carts to move your wares without having a member of the hotel staff push said rolling cart for you.

There will be a large number of people moving into the hotel on Thursday night and Friday Morning during the same hours that we will be doing Dealer Room set up, and only so many hotel staff and rolling carts. So be patient and wait your turn. The hotel WILL have extra staff on duty to make this go as easily as it is possible.

Registration for the general membership is NOT in the area of the Dealer Room or the attaching hallways, so the registration lines should NOT interfere with your setup. However, there will still be a large number of people along the paths between the front door and the elevators, and between those and the San Jose Ballroom. Please use common sense and be polite. The person in your way just might be someone that will spend at your dealership. A happy attendee spends more money than an unhappy one.

Bring your own sheet to cover your table

Every year we seem to find ourselves with a very limited supply of table cloths from the hotel for covering tables after hours. If just flipping up the table cloth that covers your table is insufficient, it is highly recommended that you bring your own bed sheet or the like for covering the table rather than depending on the convention or hotel to provide it.

No Non-Service Animals in the Dealer Room

While we know While I know some of you bring your pets and companions with you to the convention, we ask that you do not bring them to your dealer table with you. This is both as a courtesy to the other dealers in the room, and for the welfare of the pet. The dealer room is a noisy, cramped room with no windows directly to the outside world, so it only has air circulation based on that provided by the hotels environmental systems and air conditioning. Registered service animals wearing their service animal tags are permitted and welcome. No other pets, please. (This includes, but is NOT limited to cats, dogs, snakes, rats, and mice.)

Also, please note, the San Jose Convention Center (where the main stage and art show, but NOT the Dealer Room are located) has a strict NO PETS policy. Only registered service animals are permitted to travel with their humans in the convention center.

Electricity Usage

This year there is no extra charge for electricity. You will find that there will be at least one power plug available per table. It is HIGHLY recommended that if you bring your own power strip as the Dealer Room staff may or may not have any available to supplement that one power plug.

Also, please be frugal with your power use. Just because we have provided electricity does NOT mean you should bring power hungry devices to use it. One or two laptop computers, a simple pencil sharpener and/or a desk lamp to give you better light to work on art by should not be an issue. If you did NOT list on your dealer application that you are bringing a heat press, laser printer, sewing machine or engraving machine, please do NOT bring one. (Those of you that did, we are placing you where your power needs can be dealt with.) And if you bring something that can not afford to LOSE power unexpectedly... then bring your own light duty battery backup UPS to make sure you don't have interruptions. We can NOT promise uninterrupted power.

No Plastic Bags

A new ordinance goes into effect in the city of San Jose starting January 1st, 2012. This ordinance bans plastic carryout bags. For full details visit the San Jose Recycles website.

The ordinance even makes grocery stores charge 10 cents for paper bags! AND those bags must be made of at least 40% recycled content.

So, with this rule in place, we strongly recommend that you visit the website linked to above and read up on how this might affect you. The convention is researching what can be done and we may have some paper bags available. We are also investigating reusable cloth bags which we may have available for 2013, but that doesn't help for this year.

While we do not expect to have to strongly enforce the ordinance due to our event being so soon after the ordinance goes into effect, we strongly recommend that you do NOT bring plastic bags. (This does NOT apply to single book protective slipcovers like those used to bag single issues of magazines or comic books.) We know this will likely inconvenience your customers, but they will have some form of container provided with their registration material that will be valid for them to place their purchases into.

If you DO provide the sort of paper bag that the city requires, you are going to need to charge 10 cents for the bag (this is non-taxable), itemize the cost of the bag on the receipt and keep the records of same for 3 years. We cannot find anywhere in the ordinance anything about giving the 10 cents to the city or anything. We did find information, though not in the ordinance itself, that fines for not obeying the ordinance can get up to $1,000 after the third violation.

It is our belief that this ordinance mostly applies to retail businesses with actual stores present in San Jose. But the language of the ordinance does not exclude transient sales, flea markets or garage sales, thus we must assume at this time that it includes functions such as our convention and your sales at our convention. Better to be safe than sorry.

Signup Information for the Further Confusion 2012 Dealers' Room

The Further Confusion 2012 Dealer Room is sold out.

Signup Information for the Further Confusion 2012 Furry Market Place

Information and documents for the Furry Market Place may be found on the Furry Market Place page

E-mail Communication

In the interest of decreasing the amount of paper and postage we use, the Dealer Room staff will communicate with the dealers mostly through E-Mail. In the past we have done 2 mailings during the year, one in June and one in December. This year we will do only one, likely in December, containing your written confirmation that doubles as a receipt for your rental. It will also likely contain last minute information on things we think you need to know just before coming to the convention, like the sales tax rate and information on load in and load out. All other communication will be via this website and E-Mail. So be sure that the E-Mail address you provide on your application form is one you will check on a regular basis. If you change your e-mail address(es), please be sure to let us know at . If you need a written receipt/confirmation of your table rental BEFORE December, contact us and request one.

Here is a list of likely email communications you will receive from us:

  • Notice of Acceptance into the Dealer Room (if you get a table)
  • Notice of being placed on the waiting list (if you do not get a table)
  • Important Notices (usually only if they are really important)
  • Sellers Permit Reminder (if, come November 1st you haven't gotten us your Sellers Permit # from the CA BoE)
  • Convention Reminder (usually in late Dec, early Jan, with any last minute news - This is in ADDITION to the December postal mailing)
  • Offer of a Table (If you are on the waiting list, this means we have room for you, if you are already in, it means we likely are offering you a 2nd table)
All of this email will come from '', so make sure you have that email address on your 'blessed' or 'white' list.

San Jose Business Licenses

As the Dealer Room and Furry Market Place selling spaces are open only for 3 days of our 5 day convention, selling at our convention falls under a number of sections under Exclusions and Exemptions. However, if you do business at other conventions also in the City of San Jose during the calendar year, we recommend you contact the City of San Jose Finance Department to see if you need one of these licenses. Unfortunately these licenses DO cost money. For our 2008 convention, according to Brenda Charles of Revenue Management for the City of San Jose, After further review, it was decided not to pursue Business Tax Certificates for Annual Convention visitors to the City of San Jose.

Fan Tables

Further Confusion makes a small number of tables, located near the Furry Market Place or elsewhere in the hallways nearby the Dealer Room, available for use by other bay area conventions, other furry conventions (even if not happening in the bay area), and other 'anthropomorphic' related organizations to display and promote their events during the convention. These tables are available free of cost for the space. However, all persons manning those tables during Further Confusion MUST be paid members of Further Confusion. Also, no items of a taxable nature may be sold at these spaces. Also, all materials displayed and/or sold at these tables must be of a General Audiences nature. Most commonly sold at such spaces are memberships to the events they are promoting.

We have a limited number (usually no more than 5) of these tables available each year. If your organization wishes to make use of one of these spaces, send your request for a space, on organization letterhead, provide the name, mailing address, phone number and active email address of the person that will be responsible for the space. Include a flyer for the event you will be promoting, and/or a website URL where we can go to see promotional information about the event. Send this via postal mail to: Further Confusion, Attn: Fan Tables, 105 Serra Way #236, Milpitas CA 95035.

Our staff will contact you upon receipt of this physical request. Such contact will be by email at the email address provided, so make sure the address is checked in a timely manner. You must send this physical request to get one of these spaces, though it can be supplied in person, by hand, at one of the monthly staff meetings. Requesting a space by email only is not sufficient. We need the physical paperwork for legal purposes should the California State Board of Equalization ask for it, and as a means of limiting access to these otherwise free spaces. Remember, this space is for sale of non-taxable event-related materials such as event tickets/memberships and not material goods. Further Confusion reserves the right to refuse any and all applications for these spaces, without comment.

All spaces must be setup and torn down daily. All displays and materials offered must be acceptable for display to general audiences. And the area is only open during the same hours as the Dealer Room and Furry Market Place. There is no physical security in these spaces, and the availability of electricity can not be assured. While we will require that there be someone present on site to be responsible for the space, you are not required to continually man the space, but as stated above, no physical security is present and the space is in a public area. Any persons that do man the space will be required to have a paid membership to the convention. The convention will not be held responsible for materials lost in this area. Please keep this in mind.

Deadline for such applications is December 1st, 2011, and if not all spaces are reserved by that date, the unreserved spaces will be removed from the event space plan.

Rules and forms

Further questions? Please email