In October 2021, we partook in our first ever press show with the CIJ group. After living in a global pandemic for over two years we were anxious about participating in our first show, but we realised that as a small business emerging from a pandemic, we needed to participate in shows now more than ever. We began the exciting process of planning the design for our stand for the Christmas in June Press show, which took place at the Business Design Centre in Islington.
Nicola is a graphic designer so it she began working on the ideas behind our stand design, whilst the rest of the team began planning what stock to take to the show for our displays. The CIJ group were truly great with the support they offered to us as a small business, there were various marketing techniques which we really enjoyed taking part in, but our marketing team began the challenging journey of inviting various members of the press whose areas specialised in Christmas Gift Guides to make sure we managed to capture their attention with some of our latest releases at the time. We called in Marek, our carpenter who spent days making our wood and shelves for the stand, whilst Nicola, little Jess (Nicola’s daughter) and Ashleigh set out on the fun trip that is Ikea, to get the rest of the remaining furniture and bits and bobs to make our stand really stand out! We may have overdone it with the amount of Fejka’s we got, but that’s what a trip to Ikea is really about right?!
It took us roughly around 2 weeks to prepare for the CIJ show, all we were waiting on was for our uniform to arrive which we worked with another small business on @thetiredmamacollection. We had a bunch of pink hoodies and t-shirts with our welcome to the flock design on and our logo which was just amazing. The day of the show arrived and we loaded up our man with a van with all of our furniture and fejkas and set off to the business design centre! It was a really long day of setting up as we hand painted two out of the 3 walls in our stand, but we knew as a team we were going to make it work. We even had Nina, come to help out with creating our vinyl display for our Slipkit and Zodiac walls, which was such a long process, but the end result was completely worth it. Originally we had created a bubble effect frame for the entrance to our stand, but on the day we decided that it looked so much better just featuring on the top, as it meant you could see our stand better when walking past and did not obstruct the views of our beautiful displays. Agnieszka and Ashleigh then rushed off to their hairdresser’s appointment to have their hair beautifully braided into two dutch braids infused with silk ribbons coloured to coordinate with our brand. We were officially ready for our first ever press show!
The CIJ team opened up the doors to the event and the influx of press was incredible. The Business Design Centre went from being full of empty stands to hundreds of members of press and influencers all gathered with the mutual interest of discovering brand new items on the high street. We were recommended to have quite a few marketing materials for the different members of the press, but we also decided to give out freebies to ignite even more interest. The queues for our stand were insane, at one point I think there was a queue of 20 people waiting to come in and speak to us about Sheepers and what we represented. We spoke to hundreds of journalists and editors for hours on end who worked with companies such as the Daily Mail and The Stylist, we were beginning to get very excited for the Christmas ahead of us. There was a lot of interest in our latest release at the time our Slipkit, and our release which had not been yet launched, the Zodiac Collection due to their
outdoor soles. The CIJ team had provided us with barcode scanners to scan people’s ID’s with which meant that after the show had ended, we were able to access over 100 members of the press’ details who we had spent the event conversing with. The organisation and hassle-free stress behind this method was truly amazing and meant we could spend the next few weeks following up on all of our incredible discussions with all the new people we had met.
We reached out to a large number of the press who attended the show and were delighted to hear back meaning their interest in our brand was still ongoing. We had requests from various magazines to feature an array of our designs in which was absolutely incredible. We would definitely recommend the CIJ Show as an opportunity for PR and brand exposure as this show led us building a foundation of contacts with whom we still work with to this day. For example, we met an editor at the Stylist magazine who passed on our details to the relevant departments which eventually resulted in an interest of the Stylist selling our stock on their own platform, The Drop. They have featured our Zodiac Collection and our Persia Sheepers and the results have been fantastic. We absolutely love working with them. Our incredible Slipkit launch also got featured in the Daily Sun, as part of their Christmas Gift Guide 2021, which was monumental for us.
As a small business, we knew that a press show would be challenging but we took the challenge head on and could not expect the results that it delivered. Not only did we have fun but seeing the queue’s for our stand and the conversations that happened later on, meant the whole experience was completely worth it. We have an extremely busy year ahead of us, but hope to one day participate and work with the CIJ team again!
