I got to plan the VF Corporation Investor Day meeting alongside Elizabeth Trofatter, a spectacular event planner and one of my mentors while I was at Corinthian. She led the event and I supported her.
The client was VF Corporation, the parent company behind the world's leading portfolio of active-lifestyle brands, including Vans, The North Face, and Timberland. Once a year, VF brings its investors together for an onsite meeting, and as such the stakes are high. It was the annual moment for investors to see the business up close vs just hearing about it in a bland meeting.
Here's what made it particularly interesting for any planner. A normal investor meeting is general sessions, breakouts, staging, AV. This one was all that, but because VF's value is its portfolio of retail brands, each brand needed to show up as itself. So we had every brand build its own pop-up shop inside the event space. That meant six to eight individual storefronts, each with its own look, its own design language, its own actual merchandise on the floor. Vans had to feel like Vans. The North Face had to feel like The North Face. It also meant working with each brand's individual teams who felt the pressure of showing up well for investors.
To add more complexity, the venue was a pure blank space. No power, no rigging, no lighting, no AV. Everything that made the room function, and everything that made six different brands feel like six different stores, had to be brought in and built from scratch.
The event was a huge success. It won the ADMEI Excellence Award for Excellence in Meeting Services, recognition from the industry's own association for events built and run at the highest standard. Elizabeth led it and delivered, as she always did, and I got to learn from her which was a gift.
