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by Kayleen Kauffman
Last week, Paul Stanek and I packed up and ventured to New York City for our monthly portfolio meetings. We were nervous due to Paul and Maria’s previous New York/Hurricane Sandy experience, so we left extra early in case we met delays. Luckily, things went smoothly and we made it to our first stop, the beautiful SoHo office of KBS+ right on time.
KBS+ is a global ad agency with clients like BMW and HomeGoods. They requested to see automotive, beauty, portraiture and still life work from across the country. We brought along the recently updated automotive portfolio of Adam Kurtz, as well as books from Roy Ritchie, Floyd Dean, Paul Kooiman, Michael Haug, Quavondo and Winnie Au. Almost 20 creatives looked at the books, and all were happy to learn about our new Support page and on-demand stock services.
KBS+ creatives review portfolios.
Before long, Paul and I packed up our cases and jetted up to midtown for our next meeting. But first, we stopped for a quick bite at KashKaval on Ninth Avenue. I had never had tapas before (I know, I know!), but Paul persuaded me and it turned out to be a great choice. After lunch, we made our way over to the Hearst building for a meeting with ELLE.
Yum, yum!
Inside, we met with associate photo editor, Betsy Mullinex. We had a great conversation with Betsy about celebrity photographers and New York Fashion Week. She was thrilled that our fashion shooter Jodi Jones is a Fashion Week veteran, and that we have such a great roster of celebrity photographers. Among them, we showed Joe Schmelzer, Harold Daniels and Austin Hargrave. Betsy also enjoyed the work of lifestyle photographers Kelly Fajack and Jessica Sample.
Paul enjoying the company of Emma Stone at Elle.
We bid adieu to Betsy and traveled back to SoHo to meet with Wieden+Kennedy. Wonderful Machine visited their main office in Portland a couple of years ago, but we had yet to meet with anyone in New York. Wieden’s New York office has clients like Air Jordan, Heineken, Delta Airlines and ESPN. To our surprise, their building was under massive renovation, making it tricky to navigate. Once we finally made it, we met art buyers Michelle Chant and Molly Dowd. Due to the construction, none of their conference rooms were usable, so we held the meeting in their kitchen. Paul and I had a great time with Michelle and Molly, showing work from David Arky, John Early, Buff Strickland, Christian Brecheis and more. Molly especially liked that she could email us for photographer recommendations, and leave the research to us.
After our meeting, we made our way to happy hour at Cody’s Bar & Grill. Once there, we met with Jodi Jones and Adam Kurtz, as well as Jodi’s friend Jim Rooney, a Hasselblad/Broncolor rep. We had a small, cozy gathering where we discussed the day’s meetings, Adam’s fine art printing services, and Jodi’s recent trip to Brazil.
Happy hour!
Eventually, Paul and I said our last goodbyes for the day and headed back to Philadelphia. We had a fun and productive day, and even made it in and out of the city without any trouble—truly a New York miracle!
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