Jessica and I started going to every fashion event we could find in Orlando. Which, at the point, I had never been to a fashion show myself and I think Jessica maybe she was familiar with fashion. More familiar then I was I'm sure. We went to a couple fashion shows, through that we started meeting people and we enjoyed the people that we met. We really enjoyed the art, we enjoyed the hustle, we enjoyed the vision that they had. But, the thing that surprised us the most was that each event that we went to we found pockets of people throughout the city that were like-minded, had the same vision, however, they were not familiar with each other at all.
Anzzia: Yeah, okay.
Rob: So, what we decided instead of just producing the show that we were asked to market and produce, we invited those people that we met. Our first show, we decided to call it, with the person who hired us, we decided to call it Downtown Orlando Fashion Week. We had it extended to a two-day show and see what we could do. That ended up going well, very well, surprisingly well. /laughs Our first show had over two hundred people come.
Anzzia: Was this a ticketed event? What was that process like?
Rob: Yeah, it was a ticketed event. Basically, Jessica and I were the street team. So, we would walk, we walked. We decided to go in through all of these different places. We were walking through downtown Orlando, Jessica is walking in
high heels and we were actually passing out fliers ourselves and what not. We had a good feel with the number of people that we reached out to. However, in pre-ticket sales, we weren't getting that much feedback. We weren't getting a lot of feedback. So, we were nervous.
Anzzia: I can see how you would be nervous.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Showtime was at six o'clock and maybe we sold about five tickets I'd say.
Anzzia: Oh, wow!
Rob: What we decided was like, okay, we're going to go forward. We're going to go forward with this and we're going to have a good time anyway. /laughs Long story short, once we were getting ready to start the show you know, the
one person came up to buy a ticket at the door. Then another person came up to the door. Then another person came up and the line, it was so long, there were so many people it took us an hour, we started the show an hour late. Because so many people were coming.
Anzzia: Interesting problem but, a good problem to have. /laughs
Rob: It was a good problem. It surprised us. Jessica and I, we looked at each other and said, “Hey.”
Jessica: /laughs
Rob: We built some momentum and we can't just stop. We have to continue this momentum. What we decided to do was let's do another show. Let's see if we can recreate this energy.
INTERVIEW