Walter Payton Collection Launch Week

Talk about a crazy week! I just spent the past week traveling to Chicago and Tampa for the launch of the Walter Payton Collection from KangaROOS. The week started in Chicago with a party on Tuesday night hosted by the Walter Payton Foundation. The party was held at the Navy Pier and attended by members of the media, friends of the Payton family, and some ex-NFL players including Jerry Azumah.

Wednesday I spent all day in the Chicago airport due to a snow storm in Boston and finally made it back around midnight! Thursday was spent in the office preparing for the Superbowl launch party on Friday.

I ended up taking a 6am flight on Friday to Tampa, connecting through Washington DC. My flight was late getting into Tampa and since I always fear for the worst, I did not think that I would get everything set up in time for the event. So, while carrying McBody (our plastic male mannequin) and Walter (the poster) under my arms, I ran to the taxi area where I managed to get a cab in 2 minutes and arrived at the hotel 10 minutes later- only to find that everything had been set up for the event the night before. Perfect! I did not attend the Man of the Year luncheon (that happened before the launch party) so I sat in the other room for 2 hours before anyone came in to see the shoes- apparently Kurt Warner was running late and you can’t start lunch without Kurt! I got to meet all three Man of the Year nominees which was definitely cool. They all were really interested in the shoes and I believe we sent them each a pair or two. After the event, the Payton’s did a huge media run and gave out the extra gift bags to reporters- the sweat bands were a big hit!