Celebrating 2 years of Harlequin NY...

It was two years ago today that I first flew out to visit Industry City - Brooklyn, the new home-to-be of Harlequin New York, accompanied by our Sales Director, Nick Simmons.

The office space itself had been selected by Harlequin Group CEO - Derek Wallis, who had himself, made a few previous trips to New York on scouting missions and had wanted a presence in New York for many years. After careful consideration and much planning, it was decided that this would be the year to bring those dreams to life...

Arriving at the building straight from JFK, we were greeted by our contact at Industry City and given a tour of the sprawling campus and its great amenities. Finally, we were lead to Building 6 and presented with what was to become our first office - Suite C645, an empty white space, with polished concrete floors and a vast window at one end.

It certainly had potential, but it would take a lot of work to turn this bare, echoing space into a fully functioning office.

We had set ourselves the target of opening by March 2019 and over the course of the next 3 months, spent a week in the city each month, using our time to set up and attend meetings with potential clients, and create a buzz about Harlequin making the big step into the US Market.

With December also being "Market Week" in New York, this allowed us to attend some great industry networking events and spread the word to even more of the city.

Eventually, it became necessary for myself and Nick to commit to a 2 week stretch in Manhattan at the end of January, in what turned out to be in the middle of a week-long Arctic blizzard averaging -12 degrees...welcome to New York!

Despite the conditions, we had managed to find some great vendors to build and fit out the office structure and had our signature desks, lamps, artwork and iMac's flown over from the UK, ready for assembly... It was all starting to take shape...

After a few very long days and late nights, the two of us managed to get everything up to the 6th floor and assembled; with borrowed tools from the surrounding companies, pizza, favours from lift operators, local contractors, more pizza, and a lot of recycling - it was complete.

The new office was now ready for staff and Harlequin New York was about to launch itself into the USA.

This was just in time for Harlequin to attend our first WindowsWear awards, where we managed to secure ourselves a table and even brought along a few potential clients before our official launch!

March quickly came round, and it was time to fly out our staff from the UK who had put their hands up to become part of this promising and opportunity-filled endeavour. It's always been important to us that we weren't just here to start "another US agency" and that bringing with us the very thing that has made us so successful in the UK and Europe, would be key to success - our staff. Over the time that we've been in New York, we've been lucky enough to take many of our UK staff out with us to experience this amazing city, whether for meetings, secondments or award ceremonies, finally settling on Steve and Zu to become the start of our new permanent US team.

Thanks to the previous months of networking and meetings, we were able to hit the ground running with the new team, and quickly got to work taking on new clients, making sure our NY staff had plenty to do!

Fast forward to November 2019 and we'd completed our first fully US-based rollout, with 2020 looking to be a very promising year...

To finish off 2019, we proudly supported PAVE, at their annual Gala in December, by sponsoring their after-party. With the event hosted by our soon to be "very own" Roya Sullivan!

We started the year strongly, having now outgrown our first office within 9 months, and moved to a much bigger space a few buildings over in Industry City to Unit B-332. We were now able to offer much more to our clients, incorporating mock windows and a separate meeting room, this felt much more like home! Soon after, we quickly expanded the team as well, giving further support to Steve and Zu, taking on Roya Sullivan as our VP of Projects and Client Services, bringing her strong experience from Macy's, where she held the position of National Windows Director.

I first met Roya back at the start of our travels in 2018, and after being very impressed by our work she quickly became a new client, where we delivered several successful projects for her whilst she was at Macy's. Little did we know then, that 18 months later she would be heading up the US office on our side!

She was later joined by staff from her old Macy's team, bringing their in-depth knowledge of the US market and department stores, which combined well with our experienced UK staff. By this time we were working regularly with multiple clients and beginning to make a name for ourselves in the US.

The second quarter of 2020 didn't go the way anyone had planned, but with some great flexibility from Roya and the team, we still managed to keep delivering projects through June and July. It's now starting to feel like we're finally coming out of the other side, and are continuing to grow our client base, producing work for some great clients including Coach, Hermès, Zegna, Macy's and Paul Smith.

Now a team of 6, comprising of designers, project managers and production coordinators, we have built an extensive network of production shops and vendors, allowing us to produce quickly and efficiently in the US. Add this on to our existing UK and Shanghai production facilities, and we're able to competitively produce anything, from a pop-up to a single window or a US-wide rollout.

Below are some great examples of the fantastic projects we've completed in New York so far;

Michael Kors - Holiday 2018, Global Rollout - Rockefeller Center

Paul Smith - 50 Years windows and pop up - Bloomingdales

Coach x Macy's, Windows and Bag - Herald Square

Hermès - Innovation in the making, windows - US stores

Barbie - 60 years of Barbie, windows - Macy's 34th Street

Ermenegildo Zegna - Triple Stitch Sneaker, windows - Bloomingdales

I'm happy to say that we're currently very busy in the final stages of production and installation for some amazing projects for Holiday '20 with some exciting clients, old and new. Keep an eye out, as we will be sharing them in the coming weeks, and are looking forward to continuing our US expansion in 2021!

Finally, I'd just like to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who agreed to meet with us back in the early stages and was so positive about us coming to the US, and everyone who has offered their help and support, with everything from networking to finding suppliers and vendors, it really gave us the motivation to make it the success it is!