I learnt a great deal in Munich about business and design. There was a lot of confusion in the beginning setting up for the exhibition but it was a great success in the end with a lot of bags being sold and a lot of interest being created around them. Most amazing for me was the success of the linen range:- although they are my favourite bag (because I absolutely adore the antique linen) they are not generally Wren’s top seller (I’m being very open and honest here). However at the “Too Good To Waste” exhibition the bags were loved so much I sold out of the stock I had.
Here are the highlights for me.
I met Noami Baumgartl – photogapher of “Stella Polaris”. She now sports a SUREBUILD PPC Cement Laptop Bag around.
There were amazing presentation and talks. Sadly we did not realise this in the beginning and missed many but for those that I did manage to get away for, and find in the maze of a snowy Munich, I learnt a lot and was deeply inspired.
I even autographed a bag which was a first.
I met so many wonderful people – most of which I was too shy to ask if I could stand for a photograph with so the meeting is only imprinted in my memory. The opening of MCBW at BMW World was really impressive. the building is beautiful, the interactive learning center was so much fun and the people who were at the opening were both interesting and impressive.
I was on interviewed for TV (sorry, I still cannot find the clips but here is one about the exhibition as a whole). There was a lot of press and this is one of my favourite online reviews > “Too beautiful, to simply land in the garbage” by Welt Online.
In between all of this I visited museums. In South Africa we have one art museum and it does not have famous modern artworks so it is something completely different when you have to pick which museums to visit in your short stay becuase there are just too many to do them all. I cannot explain what it is like when you have learnt about an artwork and then when you see it for the first time in real life the difference there is – it really does leave one breathless and exhausted. My highlight in Munich was the Deutsche musuem which is of a scale that is incomprehensible if not experienced by oneself.
It was one very cold, very inspiring, whirlwind of a week.