Covert Operation

As you will (hopefully) know, we are going to be at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate in November, but during one of our famous brainstorming sessions our planning hit a snag - we knew virtually nothing about the venue. There was only one thing to do - find a way to get inside the Harrogate Convention Centre for a well intended fact finding mission.

After scouring the event listings for the venue, we eventually found our opportunity - The Harrogate Bridal Show. Only one small problem with this plan, the show is "trade only" and not open to members of the public. We weren't going to be beaten though, as an established stationery company it is totally plausible that we might branch out into wedding stationery... that was our reasoning! So we applied for passes and managed to blag our way in - hurrah! 

Fast forward to the day of the show...

After a quick visit to the office to check everything, we were on our way. We decided to have a trial run using the local train service to Harrogate and only slightly overpaid for our tickets (oops!). Here we are...

Next challenge - find the venue! Actually it turned out to be easy peasy! For anyone planning to visit us on our stall in November, it takes less than 10 minutes to walk from the train station and it would be very difficult to get lost. We managed and so can you! After another quick photo opportunity, and strict bag checks (thankfully didn't have anything weird in my bag that day!) we received our ID badges and Show Guide and we were off...

The show itself was definitely an eye opener and we had super fun, even if we were a little out of place! We had a good walk around and found the location of our stand, as well as the nearest facilities and entrance/exit. Although the venue seems a bit like a maze we were able to find our way to the different areas fairly easily, and were pleased to find plenty of opportunities to get a bite to eat - always thinking of our stomachs at SG HQ... 

Having seen the place in action we have definitely got more of an idea of layout and how the stands are set up - we even managed to work out the sizes of the stands so we have a better idea of how much room we will have. Lucy took a few sneaky photos to give us some inspiration for how to set up and what props we could use to make the best use of our space and make our stand look amazing.

Once we were happy that we had seen everything, we still had some time to kill before our train back so we headed through to the Royal Hall for one of the runway shows. What a beautiful venue!! I don't think either of us knew what to expect really but the show was amazing - it was all really well choreographed with great music and all of the girls (and dresses) were gorgeous! We definitely felt a bit naughty sitting watching this spectacle during work time...

Alas it was time to go home...On the train back we chatted about everything that we saw and the lessons we have learned - our covert operation was definitely a success. 

Mission accomplished!