And it was no easy task! We loaded a rental truck to the brim with our custom wall made by our good buddy Jake Bailey & then the 4 of us made the long trek down to our first major trade show, Agenda Long Beach.
Yeah...little ghetto but it worked haha
We drove to Sacramento the first day and spent the night at our friends house. It was there that we discovered we forgot the most important part of our booth (minus the hats) most of our custom laces and ALL of our wood clips. We freaked out but were able to find that Greyhound would be able to bus everything to LA in just 28 hour or so, giving us plenty of time to get the goods prior to the show. After some pizza and beers and catching up, we hit the hay. The following day we made the trek to Long Beach. The Desert was brutal, but passed quick and some podcasts helped make the trip a bit better.
Our Catalog supplier, www.uprinting.com lied to us about their store being open on a Saturday, so we showed up and after 10 angry minutes of Tyler on the phone with their HQ, we had to leave the spot and go set up at Agenda. We set up the custom wall without a hitch...but realized the wall was bare and we needed more. We ultimately decided on getting a simple cubicle wall on craigslist and plastered it with 4x6 photos of Findlay...even though Costco missed about 60 photos from our order, we still had a pretty cool looking little wall for a ragtag booth haha
After setting up the booth, we went to our first California dealer, the good folks over at www.werd.la . They threw a little pre Agenda party for us there. Good times were had, minus our sponsored singers with Hippie Heidi having their window smashed in...but nothing was stolen, so thats cool.
We spent the night at Meatchubs sisters house in Long Beach. We called that place our mobile HQ for the next few days filled with many emergency calls to Greyhound (the laces were delayed and they had no idea where they were a major issue when we need them for our company. We also showed up at the event with about 75 fully custom Long Beach themed hats to give away to good people...the hats were pocketless when we got there, which meant we had to apply those pockets prior to the event. While Nick & Tyler attached the pockets, I frantically called our laser cuter and was able to get him to make an emergency set of wood clips for our hats just in time for the show. He made the hats at 11 PM, they were picked up by our homie Marcus with Creative 35 at midnight then he was on his flight to Agenda at 5 AM, to show up only an hour after the show started. Neat!
So the show itself was gigantic. Tyler and I hung out out and manned the booth while Tyler and Meatchubs explored the Venue. They met some cool cats, including getting Travis Barker one of our hats outside their bad ass Liquor store themed booth.
The boothing experiencing in and of itself was fairly uneventful. We met some interesting folks and some interested stores & companies. Lots of radical connections and new friends.
My favorite memory of the event was catching a skateboard thief. The good folks over at Aluminati Skateboards left at closing time.Ten minutes later, I noticed some sketchy kid snag a board and start walking away. He nodded at his buddy then started fake talking on his cell phone. I followed them for a while and told a security guard, he stopped them and asked the kid where he got the board...
"umm this? I thought it was free"
...Idiot. Either way, I went to return the board, and noticed that there was now another missing board...ah well better one stolen board than two!
You can call me Big Deputy Jim! Someone on Instagram suggested we make a Deputy themed hat...I like that haha
We met this young man when we purchased the cubicle walls...he also sold us that beautiful piece of art for only $20, and thats a come up!
So yeah. Show went well, ate expensive food, met good people and hopefully we will grow as a result. We left the show Tuesday evening and were able to load everything in the back of the truck for the long Haul home. We stayed at Meatchubs friends house in downtown LA for our final night, the parking garage was sketchy for the big rig but we survived.
The following day, in an attempt to go to Chick fil A ASAP we took a detour and found ourselves not too far from Yosemite National Park. Having already missed the opportunity to take the scenic way home along the coast, we decided hitting this beast just made sense. We kept it nickel nickel and made it there just before dark. Here are a few photos of that.
Check the Photo series section of the site for the full series from Yosemite. We will have a video recap in the next few weeks as well.
So thats it. We survived our first Agenda. Uneventful, but a positive & insightful experience. We leave for Agenda NYC this Saturday to do it all over again in a new area!
If you have any specific questions about the event I would be happy to answer them!
Either way, thanks for reading this far haha Happy New year & stay tuned!
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