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After at least six months of meticulious planning (done by our sales rep... Christy) and creative vision (Sally) and 2 weeks of busting-it-out-in-the-knick-of-time work on Oiselle HQ's part Sally and I boarded a plane to Austin Texas. We arrived on Tuesday night. The Expo began on Thursday night. We had lots of work to do in the next 36 hours or so.
But first things first, right after touching down in Austin we headed over to the BettySport customer holiday party. There was amazing food (hello goat cheese stuffed jalepeno pepper), and it was a kick to see the store. It's super luxe fitness and lifestyle wear. Oiselle fits right in, naturally. Our Texas sales representative, Sara Stewart Stevens (triple S), works there part-time merchandising while completing her graduate degree in fabric**. It was great to finally put a face with name. A bright-eyed girl with a huge smile, dropping adorable ya'lls all over sentences.
After that we went out on the town... I mean, we crashed as soon as possible. After the party, we headed to Sara's house to load up a minivan full of expo booth stuff like a full body mannequin and then found our digs. We were staying right across from the Convention Center in a condo. It was nice to have that 'home base' feeling. A full kitchen, two bathrooms, a living room etc.
The next morning we planned to run at 7am, with the time change this was harder than it should have been. I laid in bed listening for any waking up sounds from Sally's side of the condo while obsessively checking the weather on my iPhone. 28 degrees. Right? Finally I kicked the sheets off and got going. We headed out the door at 7:30 to run on the river trail for 30 minutes. It was a beautiful (frigid) morning.
The expo floor opened at 11am, and we were there right on time ready to bring the booth we'd envisioned for half a year to life! We had 12 unique frames to hang, simple and elegant curtains from Pottery Barn as a backdrop. If you've ever seen the booth they give you at an expo you know how creative you'd have to get to figure out how to make a the pole frame and tacky drapes into something sophisticated yet playful, fashion-forward and fit inspired. Something that says we love running, freedom and flight, color, style and fabulously luxe, performance fabric...a booth that screams we are OISELLE!
Anyway I think our vision and resourceful creativity plus lots of Starbucks created an awesome booth! Take a look at the booth coming together:
Early birds! No one is set up yet.
One curtain up, time for a coffee/camera break.
I really was helping (I was the cut and hook part of the process).
Aaaand ta-da! I got cranking on hanging the frames and lights and we were done!
The team arrived and the event was off!
