Blog– tagged "NSS"– Smudge Ink

Posts tagged: NSS

Jun 13, 2018 • #Events #NSS #NSS2018 #Our Team

NSS 2018 Recap Part 2: The Show

The first day of the show always fills me with butterflies. I was excited, but also a lot nervous! I had silly thoughts like What if I forget how to have conversations with strangers? Or What if nobody visits our booth? But that all ended as soon as an enthusiastic attendee stepped into the booth and oohed and aahed about our cards. Phew! I knew right away that all of that work (from planning to execution) had been worth it.

nss 2018 the completed booth smudge ink

We had lots of visitors and by the end of day one, we were already halfway to our goal in terms of the number of orders placed! As you can imagine, Erin, Ally, and I were all super excited.

NSS2018 Showstopper Smudge Ink

The rest of the show was a bit of a blur. We reached our sales goal on Monday (day two)! It was an action-packed day talking to new customers, old friends, sales reps, and everybody in between. We took turns eating lunch when there were lulls in traffic. We also had a staffing switch mid-day when Erin headed back to Boston and Melissa (our good friend and owner of Print Therapy - go check it out now!) came to help us out at the show. That evening, even though we were exhausted, we headed over to Postable's party on a roof deck. Why didn't I take any photos?! It's always great hanging out with those guys.

NSS2018 20 foot wall

On Tuesday, George joined us at the show and we achieved our stretch goal! That was a good reminder that it's always good to have goals and stretch goals. Traffic was definitely lighter on day three, but we still had a grand old time in booth #1421! We told silly stories and had some lovely chats with customers. By the end of the day, I think we were all beginning to run out of steam.

NSS2018 holiday wall smudge ink

Wednesday was the last day of the show and it was a half day. The aisles were pretty empty and we only had a few people visit our booth. We each spent some time looking around and visiting stationery friends in other booths, so that made the time fly. At 1:00 the show ended and by 1:01 we were breaking down the booth. George's wife, Thy, was ridiculously kind and helped with the breakdown. Altogether, there were six of us and everything went sooo smoothly! The van was packed by 3:00 and we were on the road by 3:10. It took us about 5 hours to get home.

NSS2018 EBG corner

Everything about NSS is exhausting to an introvert like me. But also I truly enjoy talking to customers and meeting new people! I was a zombie for about a week following the show and I'm honestly still catching up with emails and to-dos that were put off, but I also had a lot of fun!

A super huge shout out to our team for MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN!

Thanks for following along on our journey. :)

-April

Don't forget to check out Part 1: Set Up!

May 17, 2018 • #deer #Events #national stationery show #NSS #NSS2018 #Our Team #Updates

NSS? Y-E-S

Tomorrow, we begin setting up our booth for the National Stationery Show in New York City! For me, this is just the latest in a series of firsts since I began designing for Smudge Ink back in October. It's been exciting, challenging, fun, and eye-opening to see what goes into building a booth from the ground up!

The most difficult part of getting started on our booth was choosing a central visual theme. A goal April and I had for this year's booth was to combine two of our strengths: the fun animals from our letterpress cards and the bright florals from our boxed note cards.

I thought the easiest way to do this would be working with a limited palette and a story that tied the two together. I loved the notecards Clayton designed for our December 2017 release and picked out the Bluebird Blossoms Boxed Note Card! It also ended up becoming a wrap and is featured on our wall calendar for 2019 (coming soon!). I kept the card on my desk for inspiration and landed on a "floral woodland," imagining a bright clearing of wildflowers in the forest -- a pop of pink, red, and blue. I began to modify the floral pattern from the notecard and applying the palette so that they could be used across both digital and letterpress printed material, booth decorations, and web elements.

The woodland theme led me to choose the deer from our new Hello Deer Friendship Card for the mailer. We used only three colors on the letterpress mailer, but each plate contained various halftones laid over each other. The final effect was like full-color printing! It was so cool to see this project on press!

We backed our mailers with the original floral pattern from the card, popped them into bright pink envelopes, hand-addressed them, and topped it all off with Mr. Rogers stamps! Those stamps weren't easy to track down because they've been so popular!

We moved onto the booth, and I brought in a LOT of paint chips. It took some narrowing down and laughing at lots of funny paint chip names (tippy toes), but we landed on a great palette! The next step for me was looking at our existing booth walls and shelves, deciding where our products would go, and making changes to some of the shelving.

Anything new would have to be built by Eric and April, so I kept as much the same as possible, using paint colors and decals as an easy way to freshen up the design. Our table will be bright blue with decals along the lower edge and, once the walls are up at NSS, I'll be adding a tree with owls to the e.b. goodale area!

All the decals and cutouts in the booth use the same limited palette and a modified version of the notecard. Realizing the booth needed a showstopper, (and channeling Mary Berry) I created a series of flower and deer cutouts that would sit on top of a shelf on the edge of our booth. It's basically a 3-d version of our mailer! I can't wait to build it!I'll be hard at work this week carefully cutting out each of these foam core pieces.

My favorite element is a larger-than-life chihuahua with a pink ribbon. She's based on a real dog, Stevie, who lives in my apartment with her mom Brianna. She's the BEST! You will also find her on a new holiday card that'll be coming out later this year!

There's a lot to do in out studio and then in NYC, but I'm prepared with plenty of paintbrushes, x-actos, snacks, playlists, audiobooks, and caffeine! I can't wait for my first NSS experience.

Come say hi at booth #1421 if you're walking the show!

Won't be at the show? Follow along on IG! We'll be posting photos and stories from the show!!