Labubu Palooza
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Reading Time
4 mins
It started with a viral moment I didn't plan for
Before there was a Labubu Palooza, there was a polymer clay workshop. I had already been obsessed with Labubu for a while, and since the little monsters were nearly impossible to find in Chicago, I figured: why not teach people to make their own? I ran a Make Your Own Labubu workshop, posted about it, and the post took off. My DMs filled up overnight.
But here's the part I wasn't expecting. Alongside all the comments and saves, I started getting messages from makers and small vendors asking if they could sell their own Labubu-inspired goods at a future event. People were creating, collecting, customizing. There was a whole community building quietly, and it had nowhere to go.
So I did what I do. I started researching.
I looked up what was happening in other cities. New York had Labubu events. LA had them. Chicago? Nothing. Not a single one. I saw the gap, I knew the community existed, and I moved.
Building it from the couch (literally)
Here is the part I rarely talk about: I was organizing Labubu Palooza #1 while I was recovering from throwing out my back. I was immobile for six weeks. I coordinated vendors, scouted the location at Blazed Bakery in Logan Square, built the marketing, handled every single piece of outreach, and did all of it flat on my back or barely upright.
I want to be honest: I did not charge vendors a single dollar for the first event. I did it out of pure love for the Labubu community and for Chicago makers who deserved a platform. And we all made money. A lot of it. The vendors did well. The event delivered.
What I did not fully anticipate was what August 23rd would actually look like.
People waited in line for over an hour. Hundreds of them. The energy was unlike anything I had created before. It was loud, it was joyful, it was a party. The night news showed up. WGN showed up too, which was a full-circle moment since they had already featured me for the original polymer clay workshop earlier that year.
Nine vendors. One venue. One woman running all of it from her phone between physical therapy appointments.
What happened next (including the part that stung)
After Palooza #1, I knew we had to go bigger. Palooza #2 was a Halloween event. Bigger venue, over 30 vendors, a DJ, a full production. And this time, I charged vendors, because I had to. The amount of coordination involved was not something I could absorb for free twice. I had learned that lesson.
But before the second event launched, something happened that I did not expect. A vendor who had participated in the first event, and someone else in the suburbs, both hosted their own Labubu events the weekend before mine. Inspired by what I had built. Timed to pull from the same audience.
I will not pretend that did not bother me. It did. I had created something from scratch, while injured, for free, out of love. And others saw an opportunity in what I made.
But I showed up anyway. Palooza #2 happened, it was bigger than the first, and WGN came back. By the end of the year, I had been featured on WGN three times for Labubu. Once for the original workshop. Once for Palooza #1. Once for Palooza #2.
What this actually took
I want to be clear about the full picture, because I think it matters.
I organized both of these events entirely on my own. The vendor sourcing, the venue scouting and negotiation, the DJ booking, the marketing, the event-day logistics, the follow-up. All while running Chicago Art Locker and holding down a full-time job in UX design.
I did not have a team. I had a vision, a community I believed in, and apparently a very high pain tolerance (the back thing really cannot be overstated).
The Labubu Palooza events are the clearest proof I have that I know how to build something from nothing, make it feel like a party, and get people to show up. That is exactly what I am doing now with Make Nice, just at a bigger scale and with a little more sleep.
What I learned about myself
I have spent over a decade in UX design, which is a field built on solving problems for other people. You research, you empathize, you design systems that make someone else's experience better. I am good at that work. I love that work.
But Labubu Palooza taught me something about myself that a decade of client work never quite surfaced: I am also someone who can build something entirely my own, with no brief, no approval process, no team, and no guarantee that anyone will show up.
I am the person who sees a gap in a city of three million people and fills it herself.
I am the person who coordinates vendors, books DJs, scouts venues, writes copy, runs social, and handles every logistical detail while also healing a back injury and working a full-time job. Not because someone asked me to. Because the community deserved it and I knew I could make it good.
I do not need perfect conditions to execute. I need a clear vision and enough stubbornness to see it through. The back injury is almost funny in retrospect, except that it genuinely was not funny at the time and I did it anyway. That is just how I operate.
What I am most proud of is not the WGN coverage or the lines around the block, though both of those things meant a great deal to me. What I am most proud of is that I did something generous first. I gave vendors a platform before I ever asked anything in return. I built the community before I monetized it. That is not a strategy I learned in a workshop. It is just who I am.
I move fast, I care deeply, and I do not wait for someone to hand me permission. If Labubu Palooza proved anything, it is that when I believe in something, I will build it from scratch, flat on my back if I have to, and it will be worth showing up for.
Read more about me and my thoughts on Labubu's through this article though DEPT.
