Style, Skills & Silver - The round-up

Here at Hiho, we’re really lucky that we have a great group of talented Ambassadors who, first and foremost, absolutely love the brands they work with. As a brand, we’re really passionate about what we do and so it’s really important to us that the people we work with are passionate about what they do too.

So when we started talking about holding an event for customers, we obviously had to include the Ambassadors too and that got the creative ideas flowing. We wanted somewhere insta-friendly and a recent visit to the Fish Hotel in the Cotswolds had put a location in mind, so we just had to decide what to do on the day.

We’re lucky in that throughout the Show season, Andrew, our King of the Road and his family see lots of our customers on our show stand and the customers get a chance to see our jewellery up close and personal, so we wanted the event to be a bit more than that.  We decided to invite a few friends from the shows along too and then the ideas started taking shape - a priced ticket event so that we could keep the numbers at a level that enabled us to ensure the workshops we were planning would really add value for people and everyone would get a chance to chat and ask their questions.

The next consideration was the food obviously, we went and checked out the menu and sized up the rooms and then we were away - time to get some information together about it and start selling tickets.  Emma, our MD, was clear from the outset that it needed to be workshops and time to chat - and lots of actual interactive doing rather than lots of just talking at people from the front of the room. 

The idea of an instameet is relatively new for the equestrian sector, much less one that involved workshops too, but we knew that people would enjoy it once they had experienced it.  Emma had been to a few of the instameets that had taken place in 2018 but wanted something a bit different in format and feel.  We knew what we wanted to do, we just needed to put a great day together - and lots of plotting and planning went on to ensure that would happen. 

We wanted it to cover topics that were instagram based and would enhance people’s skills - so we chose Style - how to easily use accessories and a few staple pieces to look good wherever you’re going, and how to develop your style in real life and on instagram.  The other workshop would encompass Skills, talking about how you could use the same piece of base content to create posts for different social media and enhancing your brand by doing so and a practical flatlay activity.  Then obviously more cake and chat to wind up the day.

Each of our ambassadors bring their own individual skills and super-powers to us as a brand so we decide to major in on those and have them each concentrating on a specific area - that way we could maximise what our guests had access to in terms of new knowledge

The format ended up like this:

The Style Group were Harriet Edwards (@harriet_lily) Karen McConnell (@karenandclan1) and Melanie Clarihew, co-founder of Mackenzie & George (@mackenzieandgeorge on Instagram) concentrating on styling and blogging skills for country and going out outfits using the brands who kindly sent us product for people to style with.

The brands were @mackenzieandgeorge, @fairfaxandfavor, @evemyandevemy, @albionlifestyle and @annabel_brocks, as well as the ambassador’s own pieces. 

The Skills group were Ruth Chappell (@dressage_anywhere), Rhea Freeman (@rheafreemanpr), Sophie Callahan (@sophiecallahan) and Rachel Bragg (@sweet_images_uk). They were talking about all aspects of using content on intagram and the practical activity was learning how to do flatlays with Rachel from Sweet Images, with the rest of the Skills team adding vital input along the way.

The way this team pulled together and created a fantastic day was outstanding and we are proud of every single one of them, but the thing that really made it for us all was the people who came along and attended the day.  Firstly, because they believed in us and booked a ticket, but secondly because they came wanting to learn and full of enthusiasm.  It really was a two-way conversation and the whole day was full of the collaboration and teamwork that really gives us a buzz at Hiho.  Feedback on the day was fantastic - and we have been blown away by the quality of the flatlay photographs that attendees have been posting when they’ve got home.  There is no better buzz than a job well done and we are so proud of them all - they are acing it!

Thank you so much to those of you who came along to the day - you’re amazing!