The Case-Mate Blog: Make A Statement

Last Friday, case-mate participated in an awesome Emmys gifting lounge hosted by Reality Cares in Los Angeles (my first time in LA, but I’ll save that for another post).

The event was really cool for a number of reasons. First and foremost this was a nonprofit gifting lounge which meant that a portion of the proceeds from the event was given to charities across the country. Also, celebs could make a donation to each charity while they were at the event.

Of course, I can’t deny that meeting celebrities was a ton of fun too! Before Friday I had never met a celebrity… except one time when I was little I took a picture with Cindy Crawford at a water park. She might have said something to me, but I was five and I don’t remember – therefore I don’t really think it counts. Needless to say I was a little nervous, but quickly discovered I didn’t need to worry because everyone loved our products! Seriously, so many people approached us saying they heard about our cases and had to visit our table. I had a blast showing off our products and helping people pick out their perfect case. The ID case was a huge hit with everyone, along with the Barely There and I Make My Case.

Here are some of the pictures we took at the event!

It turns out cell phone cases and the Medieval Times actually do mix well… if you’re talking about the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament castle in Atlanta, GA! Last night, the case-mate operations team left technology in the dust for a little medieval fun complete with turkey legs, the king & queen and a little jousting.

How about a free case? Upload a pic of yourself at the Summer Fling Truck this weekend to our Facebook page and get a code for a free custom case*!

Be sure to follow the truck on Twitter via @casemate and @summerflingtruk for up to the minute location updates!

*One coupon code per person, per entry. Not valid for any other cases. No monetary value.

This past weekend DJ Irie hosted the 6th annual Irie Weekend celebrity golf tournament in Miami, Florida.  Case-mate was proud to be a part of the event, providing awesome BlackBerry cases with the Irie Weekend logo on it. Luke Wilson, Chris Bosh, Udonis Haslim and many other celebrities signed the Irie Weekend cases which will be auctioned off for DJ Irie’s charity, Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Take a look at some great pictures from the event!

NBA player Chris Bosh shows off his Irie Weekend case-mate case!

DJ Irie signs a case to be auctioned off for his charity Big Brothers Big Sisters

NSYNC's Joey Fatone poses with a case!

Actor Wesley Jonathan after signing a case

Do you know what my favorite part about traveling is? The magazines. I’ve been buying magazines before trips for as long as I can remember. It is as natural for me to pack four or five magazines as it is to pack the essentials…like socks. It probably started as a way for my parents to distract me during long plane rides, but has since turned into the best part about traveling.

Rewind to a few days ago and I was in New York combining my favorite travel pastime with my job. Was I on cloud nine? You bet. In New York we attended Pepcom’s Digital Experience!. At the event myself and a few other case-maters spoke with top media in the U.S. From bloggers to broadcasters to magazine editors and writers, we showed off our new iPhone 4 designs. Not only was it incredible to speak with writers from some of the magazines I’ve faithfully bought for years, but it was great to see their response to our cases. I Make My Case was also a big hit as we had the site up and running for media to make their own case at the event. One of the most exciting parts of the night was speaking to a writer from O Magazine. I think she loved our ID case almost as I love magazines.

Part of my job was putting together the display table (pictured above). I love make lists and had a long supplies list for this event. Unfortunately, screw driver did not make it on my supposedly exhaustive list. Thank goodness for Adam, a Pepcom staff person, who had an extra tools just in case. Whew!

Last night, we celebrated a 2nd place win with the Georgia Top 40 Fastest growing companies! Lucky Reddy, case-mate co-founder and Product Development Director was there to accept the award and tell the crowd a little bit about who we are and I was there with the handy-dandy flip cam to capture it all on video.

We won a Webby Award for retail and just had the opportunity to send our team to the Big Apple to accept! We’re honored that the Webby folks loved our I Make My Case website and were so excited to be a part of the event.

Check out the video of our very own CMO Erik Attkisson’s 5 word speech of accepting the award:

Last weekend, our case-mate team debuted our Gay Pride cases at Pensacola Pride, held every Memorial Day weekend.

I was only able to hit one tent because they were so popular, and I didnt have many to begin with. Everyone was fighting over the cases and trying to purchase them because they were such a hit. Once people finally believed that I didn’t have any more to give out, they started trying to buy and trade them from each other!

The top picture shows a guy taking off his old case because he was so excited to put on the case-mate gay pride case!

Last Wednesday night I had the chance to meet on of my idols, Kelly Cutrone. If you are a young professional woman and don’t know who she is, you should. She is a fashion publicist and the founder of People’s Revolution, a public relations and branding company. She can be seen on Bravo in the shows Kell on Earth, The Hills, The City, and has recently written a book called If You Have to Cry, Go Outside and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You.

I have followed her for quite some time and have always appreciated her no nonsense, kick-ass, girl power attitude and am so happy she is becoming more well-known.

So, this is my tale of meeting this fabulous person…

Last Monday, midst the hundreds of annoying newsletters I get but never seem to opt out of from Banana Republic, Norstrom’s and the like, there, in my inbox was a newsletter from Borders Books announcing the appearance of Kelly Cutrone at the Borders in Buckhead. BOOK DISCUSSION! BOOK SIGNING! MEET AND GREET! I immediately began to think about how I am going to refrain from not saying anything stupid when I meet her to ensure that we become best friends. I texted my friend Riti to see if she wanted to go – number one because I thought she might enjoy it, and number two, because she would not let me make a fool of myself (although I tend to do that from time to time on a daily basis.) For someone who has met and had the chance to hang out with a few famous people in my day, meeting Kelly was different.

On Tuesday, I asked Dayna to help me get a goodie bag together with some of our awesome cases to give to Kelly. I knew she had a Blackberry, but had no idea which one. What does Dayna do? She calls up the NYC office of People’s Revolution and ends up talking to none other than Andrew Mukamal, Kelly’s fabulous goth chic assistant who is turning into a fashion icon himself. He was super “stoked” that we were giving Kelly some of our cases and also sending some to their office. Flash forward to Wednesday (for those of you that are reading this and telling me to shut up now) I made sure to leave an hour early with case-mate goodies in hand.

We were given a “list of rules” by the Borders staff:

• Kelly will only be signing her name, no personal messages.
• Pictures in the designated picture area only.
• No holding up the line for pictures.
• We will be lining up by wristband color when she is done talking.

We filed in and watied.  Our friend and co-worker from case-mate, Lucky, met us there – dressed all in black (Kelly-style).

She talked for over an hour, was hilarious, blunt, and totally cool. She took tons of Q & A’s from the crowd of about 150+ people (who I might add, are a mix of moms and daughters, hipsters, fashionistas, fashionistas that went a little overboard, and people like me who wore what they wore to work that day) and could have kept talking. She is exactly what I envisioned her to be.

We got in line after she’s done talking for the signing. 15 minutes, 30 minutes passed by and my wing women abandoned ship. I’d been standing for three hours at that point. I noticed Kelly was writing messages in people’s books, taking pictures, and chatting. I also noticed that besides the cupcakes someone brought her at the beginning of the night NO ONE was bringing her any sort of swag. I hoped she didn’t think I’m a kiss ass by bringing our fashionable cases to her…

I got up to the front of the line and had no idea what to say to her. The normal remarks of “I love your show!” or “You’re so cool!” seemed a bit elementary for a 31 year old like myself, and “You’re such an inspiration!” seemed totally cliche.

It was finally my turn. The girl behind me offered to take pictures for me. Kelly opened my book and read the name tag inside.

“Hi Emily, nice to meet you.”
“Hi Kelly, I brought you gifts. Is that tacky?”
“No way! What’d ya got?!”

I handed her the bag, told her all about case-mate, and told her Dayna talked to her assistant Andrew just hours earlier. She was surprised by this and told me she missed her peeps back in the office in NYC. Meanwhile, the girl in line behind me was snapping pictures and Kelly was positioning the case-mate bag for the camera. She wrote in my book, thanked me for the stuff I brought her, smiled, and shook my hand again.

We’ve jumped the pond and been spending the week at the Gadget Show Live in the UK showing off our lines for the European market! The Gadget Show Live is full of all sorts of, well, gadgets(!), with awesome stuff for everyone from casual gamers to those wanting to see top international teams going head to head and we decided it was about time for case-mate to join the fun!

Here are some pics of the case-mate booth. Check out that crowd!