Exhibitions in Japan #2 NUOSKA exhibition

By the support of Rovaniemen Kehitys Oy, 4 design & craft companies from Lapland, Finland organized a shop-exhibition in Finland Cafe as a satellite exhibition of Hirameki Design x Finland (29. Oct. - 3. Nov. 2010).

4 design & craft companies were consisted of small-sized companies; Aika Felt Works, Paperivalo, Mieland and Maari working in Finnish Lapland, producing handmade products. We all exhibited in Ambiente in Feb. 2010, since then, this was the second cooperative international marketing event for us.

Differing from Hirameki exhibition, this NUOSKA exhibition was completely conducted by the participants' initiation. Our aims were to get new business contacts, sell our products to visitors during the show not only exhibiting, and introducing ourselves before-during-after the exhibition to Japanese market.

Because I'm Japanese and I had had some business partners already in Japan, I was expected to suggest some ideas for this project. My ideas were to have a shop-exhibition in Finland Cafe which organizes events frequently in their space having already a kind of fans of them, rather than renting a gallery space, and to publish free zines edited by ourselves, telling our stories instead of making mere catalogues, and give it away before-during-after the event in many places.

I had been quite interested in publishing a free zine. I had been sending press materials to magazines whenever I organized exhibitions in Japan, but it was up to magazines if they wrote about me or not, and I was feeling powerless to spread my information. And for this event, other companies needed to make catalogues in Japanese newly, which, I thought, can be included in the free zine, in addition to our stories. The stories - because we are making handmade products, we have own reasons that we have started our businesses, and our products have unique backgrounds and thoughts behind. Making things is, as it were, our way of living, and I wanted to share these stories with our customers through our products. So publishing free zines was the form to achive my wish.

So I wrote all the articles in Japanese and edited the zine with my Japanese friend who had been working in publishing company as a designer. It took a lot, lot of time .... even though it was a valuable experience for me, I couldn't produce my products during working on this for 3 weeks ;)), and I had just 2 weeks left to make products for taking to Japan (because my husband was going to have his exhibition in Osaka, we had to leave to Japan about a month earlier than the event). I had to forget about my pregnancy. Work, work, work!!

Then we made it! You can see the free zine here. I sent out the free zines to prospects inviting to our opening party, and Finland Cafe started delivering the zines in stations and their shop.

We organized opening party inviting shop owners, press people, and people from Finnish-related organizations. Each of us made a presentation and beautiful Finnish food was served.

I tend to undertake too much work that I can't really handle... this time, too. But I wanted:)), and because of the complacence after challenging unfamiliar experiences, I can still go on.