Behind the Booth: Preparing for Our First Atlanta Gift Market

We’ve talked a lot lately about the importance of getting out there rather than waiting until we feel fully ready. 

That has probably been one of the biggest mindset shifts for us as a brand. Not waiting to be chosen. Not assuming you need every detail perfectly figured out before participating. Just deciding to step into the next room and learn as you go.

Preparing for our first Atlanta Gift Market has felt like a very real version of that.

From the outside, a trade show booth can look surprisingly simple. You walk through a market and see a beautiful space, thoughtfully displayed products, and conversations happening throughout the day. If it’s done well, it feels natural. Easy, even. What you don’t see are all of the decisions underneath it.

As we’ve prepared for Atlanta, we’ve started to understand just how many layers contribute to that experience. Every detail shapes how people experience the work. Some decisions are creative. Some are logistical. Some are small enough that nobody walking by would consciously notice them. But together, they create the feeling people carry with them after they leave the booth.

If you’ve ever walked through a market wondering how brands pull all of this together so seamlessly, we’ve definitely felt that too. So we wanted to share a more honest look at what preparing for our first market has involved for us and some of the thinking behind the choices we’ve made along the way.

The First Decision: Where You Sit Changes Everything

One of the first things we learned is that choosing a booth location involves much more than finding an open space on a map. You start thinking about foot traffic, visibility, and how people naturally move through the larger market. You are not simply choosing where your booth sits. You are choosing how people will encounter your brand for the first time. In a market environment where buyers are constantly taking in information, those first few seconds matter more than you realize.

For Kindly Woven, we chose a booth at the end of an aisle because we wanted people turning the corner to see the booth directly in front of them rather than from the side as they walked past. We hoped that direct line of sight would naturally draw people in and give the work a stronger visual presence from the start. Once that decision was made, it began shaping everything else, from the booth layout itself to what people would see the moment they stepped closer.

Designing the Booth Experience

Once the booth location was chosen, the next layer became designing the experience inside the space itself. That meant thinking about layout, flow, and what people would notice first as they approached the booth. In a market setting, buyers are making quick decisions constantly, so the space has to communicate clearly before a conversation even begins. Realistically, you are trying to create a booth that makes someone stop mid-walk and think, wait… I want to go in there. 

For Kindly Woven, we knew we wanted the artwork itself to play a central role in the booth design. On the back wall, we created a gallery-style display showing a simulated woven version of the final piece, with a small placard beneath each highlighting the artist who created it. We wanted people to immediately understand that these pieces begin as artwork created by real artists, not just products folded onto a shelf. 

Beyond that first look, the booth is designed to feel layered with blankets while still remaining clean and uncluttered. We want people to have a tactile experience with the work, but in a space that still feels elevated, intentional, and easy to move through. 

The Details That Carry Weight

Some of the smallest decisions end up carrying more weight than you expect. Lighting, materials, spacing, display height, even the way products are folded or layered throughout the booth all influence how the space feels once someone steps inside. On their own, these choices can seem minor. But together, they shape the overall impression people leave with. These aren’t finishing touches. They influence how the work is understood.

For us, lighting was one of the details we thought carefully about from the beginning. We ordered lighting through the venue, but also purchased additional battery-operated options as backup. There is nothing worse than spending months creating a product only to have to display it in a dark booth. That same thinking carried into the rest of the space as we worked through the many smaller decisions needed to support both the vision for the booth and the practical realities of the market itself.

The Logistics Layer

In many ways, the logistics begin before the creative direction is even fully figured out. The moment you commit to a market, there are a hundred practical decisions waiting for you. Travel gets booked. Booth components have to be planned, ordered, and shipped. Timelines suddenly matter a lot more because everything has to arrive in the right place at the right time. You can have a beautiful vision for the booth, but if key pieces do not show up or something gets delayed, the entire experience shifts quickly. A large part of preparing well is simply trying to think ahead before small problems turn into much bigger ones. 

For us, many of those decisions started the moment we officially committed to Atlanta. Hotels were booked, flights were planned, and we started figuring out how the booth itself would physically get to market. We laid out the exact booth dimensions ahead of time and tested placement for the different components so we could understand how the space would function before arriving onsite. It is much easier to adjust a plan beforehand than while standing inside a convention center during setup hours. This kind of preparation is rarely glamorous, but it matters.

Holding the Whole Picture Together

One thing this process has made very clear is how many moving pieces have to work together at the same time. Booth planning, shipping timelines, product preparation, travel coordination, budgeting, and setup logistics are all happening simultaneously, often affecting one another along the way. There is rarely a moment where one category feels fully complete before something else needs your attention. At a certain point, preparing for market becomes less about individual decisions and more about keeping the entire experience moving together. 

We’re also learning a lot of this in real time as we build something entirely new for Kindly Woven. We’ve done the planning as thoroughly as we know how. We’ve thought through the booth, worked through the logistics, and tried to anticipate problems before they happen. Now it’s time to actually go do it. 

In many ways, that feels true of business in general. You make the best plan you can with the information you have, and eventually there comes a point where you have to trust the work you’ve done and move forward. 

Thoughtfulness Is the Strategy

As we’ve worked through all of these layers of preparation, we’ve gained a much deeper appreciation for the booths that feel effortless once you walk into them. The spaces that feel welcoming, clear, and easy to move through usually only feel that way because someone spent a great deal of time thinking through the details beforehand. Good booths rarely happen accidentally.

We also know it can be easy to look at brands showing at market and assume they somehow know exactly what they’re doing at every step. Truthfully, most businesses are still learning, refining, adjusting, and figuring things out as they grow. That has absolutely been true for us preparing for Atlanta.

And honestly, we think that’s important to say out loud.

You do not have to know everything before you begin participating. You do not have to wait until you feel perfectly ready to take the next step for your business. A lot of growth happens because you decide to show up, prepare thoughtfully, and learn through the process itself.

If you’ve enjoyed this kind of behind-the-scenes look at building Kindly Woven, we share more of these conversations regularly through our newsletter. From brand growth and creative process to the realities of building something new in real time, it’s where we share the things we’re actively learning as we go.

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