LA Story, Part 1
May 10th, 2007If you were in Los Angeles last week, you would have noticed that it was a balmy 73 degrees, sunny with a nice cool breeze. Perfect LA weather for heading to the beach or strolling down Santa Monica’s 3rd Street…
I can tell you this because i observed it firsthand in my taxi rides to and from LAX to the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the Baby Celebrations show was held. The rest of the time, literally except for a few hours sleep, Teri and I were working like mad on our first ever trade show booth and vignette. You know how your firsts remain perfectly etched in your memory? Well, Baby Celebrations will undoubtedly be a bit like that for us, because we had NO idea how much work such an undertaking entailed! Since we had a 10×15 foot vignette that was part of a competition held by Pregnancy magazine, we had a crazy amount of work to do. In fact, we spent so much time on our vignette, admittedly enjoying the creative process, but wasting tons of time by painstakingly lining up paper lanterns, etc., that we kind of forgot we even had a booth until about 4:30 Friday evening. Doh! Well, we managed to pull it together for the show despite our simultaneous panic attacks. The best part of this show for us? Getting the experience of putting a booth and a vignette together, but also meeting some amazing designers (more on them in Part 2 of this blog post) and making some new friends in the kids industry.
The Vignettes
When we arrived at the showroom on Thursday morning, the first thing we saw was a big, blank wall that formed the outside of our booth (we had no idea that we had this outside wall to use in our vignette). So we spent a good amount of Thursday designing and executing the look for the outer wall, you can see it here:
Because kukunest is all about fun and playfulness, we hit on this idea of a group of kids heading on over to our booth and working our name and logo in there. Frankly, given that we had no other materials to work with, we could only paint on this wall. But I have to say, I’m quite happy with the results and 3 weeks of planning probably wouldn’t have resulted in anything as fun!
The idea for our vignette was to use Lantern Festival to showcase the fun vibrant colors of our bedding and to also work in a festive, multicultural look. We used primarily inexpensive props because we wanted a ‘designer’ look that was also accessible. We wanted to work the creativity angle in there and make something handmade (that’s the wall drawings like the coat hanger, birdcage on the shelf, etc.) that we incorporated into the vignette). Unfortunately, the hand drawn decor did not photograph well (guess you had to be there, eh?) but looked good in the vignette. Not surprisingly, the other modern vignettes had handmade wall treatments too, i’ll show those in Part 2 (coming in a few days). Who won the competition? Sorry, i’ll have to keep you in suspense until the end!
We definitely wanted our vignette to have the feel that a real child lived in this room (okay, a very tidy child who makes her bed very neatly, so maybe not that real) and to avoid an overly perfect ‘catalog look’ which rather than being fun, can be a little stifling.
Here’s another angle:
The fun little work table and bench are from Argington, modern kids’ furniture.
In a few days, I’ll post photos and commentaries of the other modern vignettes from this competition: Litto Kids, Boodalee, and Nurseryworks. There were a few ‘princess and castle’ themes that were extremely ornate, pink, and used lots of ballet tutu fabric. I didn’t include those here, although perhaps i should have to give you a sense of what was out there. The modern room vignettes were so different from one another; Teri and I were very much inspired by the creativity and execution of the designers.
Final note for this post: Robert Mahar of Mahar Dry Goods stopped by our booth at the show - a real treat for me because i love his website and blog. And not surprisingly, his personality is exactly like that of his site - totally charming and genuine, someone you’d love to go out and get a beer with. He sells very sweet vintage, one of a kind, and all handmade, children’s items, like Giddy Giddy hairclips made by our very own Teri.
Cheers,
Laura
May 10th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Finally! A kids bedding company… I’ve searched and searched…
May 11th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I *love* your bedding—especially the Around the World series. I’m expecting my first child in September—any chance you will be making this pattern available in crib sets? Keep up the wonderful work!
May 12th, 2007 at 4:03 am
Congrats on the vinette ladies! It looks amazing and I love the coat rack. See you in June at studio grow. Trieste