205: What We're Bringing to the Table at Expo

Hi there. Welcome back to the Professional Creative Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here with me today. In this episode, I am inviting you behind the scenes of something that has been such a joyful and incredibly meaningful part of my creative journey this year and also just in my entire career, and that is exhibiting at the Licensing Expo. Now, the Licensing Expo is the world's largest licensing trade show, and it's where artists and brands and people with IP intellectual property like Coke and Pokemon go to exhibits so that people can license what they have. So in my case, it was artwork. More specifically, this episode is going to be about the creative vision behind our very first booth. And I love that I'm recording this today right now, because I'm also right in the middle of interviewing the entire expo team, the people on my team that I took with me because we're developing a documentary about the entire experience. Now, the documentary I can't wait for you to see it is going to be coming out in August of 2025. And so there is so much to share and show about this whole experience, but today I'm living in it. I've already explored two interviews this morning. I've got two more right after I'm done done with this podcast. So I'm living inside the booth that I'm going to talk to you about today. This was such a special experience for me, but for the entire team, because it gave us the opportunity to bring the heart of our brand to life in a really immersive, physical, tactile way. And so today I'm going to be sharing with you what went into designing the booth, the intention behind all of the details, what worked, what challenged us, and what I hope that you can takeaway as inspiration for your own business, whether or not you ever plan to show at a trade show or not. There were so many takeaways that I think will be relevant for you. So by the end of this episode, my hope is that you'll feel encouraged and equipped to think about how you can tell your story of your work in a way that feels really authentic and meaningful and true to you and maybe even in a physical form as well. Before I get into it, I also want you to know that I have something fun for you at the end of this episode. It's a free brainstorming page that's going to help you imagine what your own experience could be. How do you bring this kind of tactile, analog aspect of storytelling to your work? And so I'll tell you more at the End of this episode.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

Our goal for the booth was simple, but it was also really layered. We wanted to create an experience, something that felt like stepping inside the heart of our brand. We wanted to envision what would it look like if we had a storefront or created this entirely immersive experience that really played on all senses. We wanted it to feel warm and inviting and rooted in really our ethos. Everything that we wanted to bring to life. We knew that from the very start. We wanted to create what we called a greenhouse. It was this open, airy wooden structure that felt like a space where, you know, everything kind of pulled together in the middle. So from the color palette to the texture, to the tiniest details, everything we included was chosen to create a moment of pause, a breath of calm, and a quiet invitation to connect. There were really soft, nature inspired colors, shades that felt earthy and peaceful. We layered in textures like vintage rugs on the floor and woven blankets from our shop, flowery and upholstered furniture and pillow covers in my patterns. And of course, hundreds of samples. We had hundreds of fabric swatches, large swatches. They were like 22 inches by 22 inches. We had hundreds of gift wrapping samples. We had hundreds of wallpaper samples. Our booth was large and you'll know more about how this came to be and the decision to do this when you watch the Expo documentary. But for now, just know that we decided to go all in. And so we had a 20 by 30 foot booth that was island. So we wanted to create something that felt really inviting from all four sides. We also had this live floral installation that wrapped the greenhouse and the scent of fresh eucalyptus and flowers. I can't tell you how many people commented on how good it Smelled. People would step inside and take a deep breath, and they could see. You could see in their faces that they felt different. And that was exactly what we were hoping for. We weren't exactly sure, though. As we began kind of building this booth, we quickly realized that it was different. It was different than anything else that we could see. And that gave us a lot of pause. Were we in the right place? Did we know what we were doing? Was it going to work? I don't know. We spent so much time pouring ourselves into this, and we didn't look around at any other kind of booths for inspiration or anything like that. We just kind of showed up and did our thing. And it turned turns out that that was incredibly different. There was vast contrast between what we did and what was typical for the show. And in hindsight, that was what worked so incredibly well. We offered this space of calm and breath in the middle of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, where overstimulation is the name of the game. From the moment you step off of the airplane in the Vegas airport to the moment you get downtown and all of the traffic and the music and the light and the neon and everyone staying up all night, and it's just wild. And so we wanted to create this absolute oasis in high contrast to what people were being surrounded by. And it was magnetic. We brought so much of ourselves into this booth, and every element had a purpose that we had really thought through. There was a wall filled with these fabric swatches hung so that people could touch them, feel the textures, see the SC of my patterns, experience the colors. It was really like a living, breathing wall of a portfolio. Our walls were designed to show my process. One of them was this huge pencil sketch of birds on branches that kind of morphed itself into the finished pattern, and it was life size. It was important for me to show how the work unfolds so that people could see not just the. The final product, but the journey. You know, I felt like I wanted it to be living and breathing humanity. There is a human artist behind this work, and this is what the process looks like. One of the other things we did that I felt really accomplished that well, was that we included three large mood boards that we hung on the wall. And so on Sunday night, before the show opened, most of the team gathered in a hotel room, and they covered the bed with fabric swatches, bits of vintage paper and ephemera that I had brought with me and photos and sketches and all these little treasures that inspire me and together created these three mood boards. That felt like one of the ones that I keep in my studio to reference as I work. It was such a fun moment for the team because they effortlessly, seamlessly built these boards into one cohesive message. They were so pretty. One of the things that I had a lot of fun with was that I had this planter that was about 4ft tall and 18 inches wide, and, I don't know, maybe 6ft long. And this was how we made a division in between the walkway and our meeting area. And I filled it with fresh soil and plants and flowers that we had gotten from the local garden centers in Vegas. I planted them right there inside the booth. So everything was living, it was alive, which was very in just stark contrast to this conference center. I had dirt under my nails and scratches on my arm from these rose bushes, but I was feeling so deeply connected to what it was we were creating. And then there were these birds. These birds have quite a story. We fell in love with this concept of hanging birds from an installation that we had seen online. And I knew that I loved kind of that sweeping movement that hanging birds could achieve. And so we actually contacted the woman who did this initial installation. And she shared with us how she made them. And she also shared with us that she. She didn't want to do it again. And so we started to kind of go to plan B, C, D, E, F, G. We were thinking about other options, maybe creating them out of paper. Anyways, I got the hunch to just try to do it myself. And so I wanted to do basically paper mache birds, and I wanted to sculpt them. And so I found these really honestly scary looking, like cheap birds on Amazon that were feathered, and they had these beady eyes on them. But what I needed was the form. And so I started ordering these. I ordered 38 of them. And I started playing with how I could use them as the form to something really beautiful. And so I began using paper mache. First, I was using tissue paper and this, like, Elmer's glue mixture that I made. And it worked, but it was very slow and very difficult to kind of COVID up the black portions that were of the bird. And it also took forever to dry. And so through iteration, I finally landed on this sculpting paper. It was plaster. So this roll of plaster that you could cut strips of, I'm sure you've. If you've been crafting for long, you've probably ran across it. And so I started using these strips to make plaster birds out of these forms that I had purchased and it was a major labor of love. I think I probably have 100 hours into making these 38 birds. And also I was a obsessed with the process. It was so fun. I was doing maybe three or four a night when I got home. Then they would dry and then I would spray paint them and put a final coat on them. And then I had to use like a doll needle that's like a D O L L, like a long 6 inch needle that they make, they use for doll making to thread fishing wire through them so that we could hang them from the booth. Anyways, I love the sculpt, sculpting and painting these birds. And it was so fun to see them come to life in the booth. They really gave the booth a lot of movement. And so they were in two different places in the corner and then in the greenhouse. And so I had this idea to take wire and build this kind of form to where the birds could go up as well as hang. And so you ended up being able to see these birds from hundreds of yards away. And it pulled you into our booth. It made you wonder what it was. You know, someone at the expo that I met laughed and said that next year I should take a bunch of extras and go put them, put them in the booths that I really wanted to connect with and say, come find me at, you know, booth number whatever. I thought that was hilarious. So anyways, we loved these birds and it was such an incredible kind of project to do that pulled the whole vision together. We also brought pieces of our flowery product line. We brought tea towels and aprons, notebooks, candles and trays and these soft toys that we had and a bunch of cotton woven blankets all in my designs. And everything was laid out on a table in the middle of the booth and styled so that people could really come and interact with it. It almost felt like this shopping experience because I wanted people to feel what it was like to hold the patterns in their hands and to what my work really looked like when taken to product and imagine how they could bring that beauty into their own spaces.

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It was not without challenges though. I want to share some of the behind the scenes of the challenges because they were very real and I think very important to talk about. One of the biggest challenges for us was working with builders to create a booth that really felt like us and within the constraints of the trade show materials and inside of our budget constraints. Most trade show booths are designed to be incredibly lightweight and easy to assemble and also cost effective, which means aluminum frames and vinyl walls. But that is not what aligned with the feeling that we wanted. And so we talked with several different builders who told us that it really just wasn't possible to achieve Especially not at our budget. They said there's no way to build what we're envisioning within the budget or the material constraints. So I think we were on our fourth or fifth builder in our meeting and we kind of just stuck to our guns. We want to create this vision. We want to do it with inside the team, this budget. Do you have any ideas? And so we found the right partner, someone who really listened. They understood, they were incredibly excited about it, they got the vision right away and they worked with us to create a space that balanced this beauty and everything that we wanted, but also alongside function and feasibility. So we ended up working with this company called Highway 85. We fell in love with them, we will always use them. And it was such a gift to collaborate with someone who shared that commitment to making it work. So not only could they do it, but they did do it. They far exceeded our expectations and they did it under budget, my friend. But this was probably one of the biggest hurdles that we faced, was figuring that part of it out. Another challenge was just the sheer amount of hands on work that was required to assemble the booth and style the, the patterns and the products and the walls. Every piece had a handmade element to it. And so we couldn't just show up and have everything set up for us, which is what many people are able to do. We had to be there. We were working alongside the builders and climbing ladders and hanging birds and arranging flowers and literally setting up the walls and hanging hundreds of swatches and designing as we went. And so it was iterative and it was creative and it was also really long. We didn't have enough time. We didn't have the time that we needed. And so we were there long days, late nights. There were moments where we were very much wondering if we would be able to accomplish it. So we ended up staying till after 11pm on the night before the expo began, knowing that we all had to be back up at 6am the next morning. And I remember just kind of walking back, feeling completely exhausted and also worried because. Because we weren't quite done yet. There were times that we all looked around and thought, like, everyone's booths are finished. They went to dinner hours and hours ago. And ours looks so different. We're still here. Was this the right call or was it not? Are we staying true to our vision? Was that a good thing? Or have we come to the wrong place? So we were all really nervous the morning of the exercise expo and we actually all, we met in the lobby of the hotel and we were jumping on our Uber together, and we all looked at each other with these kind of big eyes, and we're like, I don't. I don't feel good. Like, literally, we're. Our exhaustion made us feel sick, like we had not gotten enough rest, and we were so exhausted, and we had a big day ahead of us. Well, that brings me to the opportunity, because what we learned through this experience is that creating a space, especially in physical form, that tells your story and invites people in is one of the most powerful things that we can do. Whether that is a booth at a trade show or a display at a market or even your online presence, you have the chance to create an experience that reflects who you are and what you stand for. And people are drawn to that authenticity. They're drawn to spaces that feel personal and meaningful. And you can start creating that in small ways or big ones right where you are. The moment we got to the show, we started kind of fixing the last minute things, sweeping the floor and cleaning the tables. And we were just so nervous. And I'll never forget, they opened the floor and people started walking, and almost immediately they would stop and gaze, and they would eventually come in and start asking questions like, who are you? And what are you doing, you know, here? And we were able to start telling our story and handing out issues of Pattern magazine. And literally 20 minutes into the show, we all looked around at each other and started laughing and said, who needs sleep? Like, we were immediately energized by the energy of the floor.

Then.

Our first meeting was 30 minutes after the show began. And from that moment, I never stopped. I was so worried because when we came in, we had nearly no meetings booked. We had six meetings on the books when we wanted. We had reached out to over a hundred people. We only had six on the books. We had no idea what that meant. And immediately we began to be booked. I sat down at the first meeting and I never got back up. That day I scarfed down a protein bar in the bathroom stall because we were booked. So back to back to back. In fact, that night we went to Target and got a secondary meeting space just so the next day we could take two meetings at once. And so to say that it worked is an understatement. We all decided that two hours into the first day, it was a three day event. Two hours into the first day, we could have gone home and felt like it was a success and absolutely worth it. And that just never stopped. It kept going and going. So I want to talk to you about Some different ways, some actionable steps that you can start thinking about how to bring your story into a living kind of creative space. The first one is to really get curious about visually, storytelling. Think about instead of just displaying your final work. So if it's a final pattern or it's a final piece of jewelry or a final piece of product that you've done, think about instead of that. And before that, can you share the process? Your sketches, your inspiration boards, your process photos, how you gathered inspiration. That way you pull people into the journey so that they're not just at the final destination, but that they can see more of what pulls you in. So for us, this was very much the storytelling aspect. The mood boards, the photos on the wall, the pattern magazine that we were able to pull people in through that visual storytelling. The next one is to create opportunities for tactile connection. If at any chance you can have the opportunity to let people interact with your work, touch your work, feel the textures, experience the scale, smell the candle. Whether it's fabric swatches or product samples or paper prints, giving people something to interact with makes such an incredible, lasting impression. So I'm thinking about everything from markets to being able to send samples in the mail, to being able to give some kind of a physical demonstration. One thing that worked really, really well for us were these. These physically printed press kits. And that is what our very next episode is going to be about. I'm going to talk you through what was in the press kit, how we did the whole thing, and why it was such a winner for the show. But it was something tangible that they could take away with them. And so when you're looking to work with someone, whether it be a collaboration or a partner or a licensing opportunity or a shop that you want to carry your product in, the opportunity to get them, a physical, tactile connection to your work cannot be understated. Something happens when it's off the Internet that is irreplaceable. And then number three is to root everything in meaning. Before you go to design a display or a website or a space, I want you to ask yourself, what experience do you want to create? What story do you want to tell? Every element should help people connect with you, who you are and what you love. I heard this, this over and over and over again that brands and companies were looking for artists who had story designs, that had story. They were interested in the meaning in the process, in the inspiration, in the muse, if you will, and so never, ever step away from that meaningful deepness of the story. That's yours and only yours to tell if it's the thing that's that makes your work stand apart from anyone else's and everything else in the market. I think there's this myth that people only care about the final product and that speed and efficiency are all that matter. And that's not true. Or maybe you felt the fear of like AI or mass production, taking away that need for human made art. And what we saw at the Expo was the exact opposite. Everyone was hungry for original work, for hand drawn motifs, for the story behind the art. They wanted to meet me, the artist, they wanted to hear from me why and understand the heart behind it. So your story really matters, your process really matters. And when you share it, you create connections that last just forever. So as you reflect on this, I want you to think about how you can invite people into the story of your work. How can you create spaces, whether they be physical or virtual or even micro think package in the mail style, that help people experience what makes your thing, your art, your product, so incredibly special? We built a booth that was designed to delight all the senses and invite people in and invite them to slow down and you can do the same thing, invite people into your pace. This makes me think about, you know, everything that happens online is quick and there's supposed to be a hook and you've only got three seconds and it feels like everything is in a rush. And what if the most magnetizing thing you can do is invite someone to come and match your pace, which is just a little calmer, it's a little more inviting. So this week I would love for you to spend just 10 minutes thinking about what would this creative space look like if you let it tell a story. And again, that creative space can be physical in form or it can be a virtual space.

What textures, colors, smells, if that's applicable,

or objects and stories would you include? And don't forget, I've also created this simple brainstorming page for you to help you get started. It's going to outline everything for you that you can use to get brainstorming on what this could look like, like for you. And you can find that in today's show notes. I'll see you next Thursday. Again, where we're going to do a deep dive into our press kit and why that was really the winner of the show. Until then, my friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.