Marina Walker at Progressive Greetings Live 2022
This year I exhibited for the first time at Progressive Greetings Live 2022 at the Business Design Centre which ran from 7-8th June. In fact, this was my first trade show since launching my cards onto wholesale. Daunted? Oh yes! But also so excited to immerse myself in the world of greeting cards for two days and meet other publishers, retailers and agents.
Setting up my 3x1m stand was probably the most stressed I was during the event, as I had my vision of how I wanted my stand to look and it was now a question of bringing it to life. Considering how colourful and diverse my photographic cards are, I knew I needed a relatively neutral paint colour so opted for a blue toned grey (the contractors actually said my paint colour was their favourite of the day and they had painted A LOT of stands!) I then fixed up my shelving, arranged my furniture and I was ready to put my cards in their places. After a few hours of hard work, I went back to my AirBnB to relax before a few big days ahead!
It was a joy to meet the people at my neighbouring stands on the first morning; we actually all commented how lucky we were to have such a friendly row and we all had great chats in between meeting visitors.
I didn’t really have any goals as such for PG Live, I knew it would all be a learning experience and didn’t want to put pressure on myself to come away with any particular results. But when I took my first order of the day it was a joyous moment and I knew I had made the right decision to exhibit. It is so unbelievably nice to meet the faces behind the shops; especially after the past few years of the pandemic, attending an actual event with people mingling again was quite special. I met some great contacts who were interested in not only my cards but my photography services. Already I have booked a big photography job from someone seeing my work at the show.
I was amazed to see the variety of designs and talent on display around the show from the big publishers to independent makers and was interested to see people embracing new trends and ideas.
In terms of photographic publishers like me, we were definitely thin on the ground in comparison to the illustrators, artists and graphic designers. Are photographic cards out of fashion? I don’t believe so, but they are perhaps still seen as quite traditional or maybe limited in their presentation. In my work I have always striven to take the classic subject matter of flowers and photograph them in a contemporary way, touching upon modern trends such as the ‘Instagram flatlay’. But all in all I was happy to fly the flag for photographic greeting card makers and it was a positive to stand out from the crowd.
If you are a new publisher and are on the fence about exhibiting at PG Live, I would say go for it. It isn’t cheap to exhibit, but I do believe it’s a worthwhile investment, not just for the networking but the overall inspiration you come away with.
A big thank you to Jakki, Warren and the team at Max Publishing for an outstanding event. I hope to see you next year!
