With over 25 years of experience in Manitoba’s event industry, Emma Singh is an experienced event planner and creative force, whose name has become synonymous with elevated event experiences. Throughout her career, Emma’s reputation for flawless execution and impeccable service has earned her a place among the Top Event Planners in Canada. Her dynamic background, spirited vision and enthusiasm can be seen throughout her creative projects and her work has won countless awards as well as been featured in various forms of modern media.
Tell us a bit about your relaunch of your company and how it differs from your previous work with Events by Emma?
I had been the Founder & CEO of Events by Emma Corporation for almost 15 years and we were highly successful producing more than 200 events a year pre-pandemic. We closed March 2020 when COVID hit and released 45 staff. We had a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse office building. By September of last year, we still had not opened or brought back staff, so we realized very quickly this was going to be much longer than any of us anticipated.
I had to make a lot of difficult decisions—we ended up having to release our warehouse due to the situation. We closed Events by Emma Corporation. I took about six months to do some soul searching and decided I wanted to relaunch and create a new business model that would work in a COVID world. I was able to take everything I had learned over the last 15 years and re-imagine my new brand, which is now Emma Singh Creative.
I’ve put a lot of thought into the ways we’re going to pivot as the event industry reopens. We will continue to see virtual and hybrid events and we’ve seen the benefit of them as we’re able to broaden our reach.
Our ultimate goal is to get back to live events; it’s going to take time to see the event industry remerge strong. We’re also going to see continue to see flux as there are changes with COVID variants and the challenges that might bring. We don’t know what’s that’s going to be, so my new business is going to be able to manage through restrictions as they change.
How did your business model pivot as a result of the pandemic?
My business model has gotten much smaller and more efficient. I think that COVID has taught us that we can work virtually and still be productive. This has been a change for me in that I don’t have this huge operation, but I can be just as productive as I was before. It forced me to embrace technology and helped me to find new ways to engage with my clients.
We’re trying to create services that are flexible for our clients and allow them to pivot and change and evolve as restrictions change, whether it’s forwards or backwards at the current time.
For our clients, we’ve created packages that allow for small, micro events, allowing for both indoor and outdoor gathering opportunities. We know that there are different restrictions allowed for those types of events. We’ve seen a lot of our clients that have traditionally had indoor events, move to outdoor events and vice versa, and so we want to provide flexibility to our clients by providing the right set of services for them.
We’ve also started a whole new line of services, which is our pop-ups. Understanding that restrictions change overnight sometimes, our whole pop-up line is allowing us to do events in a very short planning process for clients. They are loving it. We’ve done pop-up nuptials, picnics, dining, meetings, where within two weeks we can plan an event that’s been on hold for a client in a pop-up scenario. Our clients really embrace the pop-up philosophy, understanding that things have to happen quickly and we don’t have as much lead time in planning an event.
What services can you offer to the meetings and conventions market and how do you typically work with planners to elevate their events?
We can offer meetings and convention clients a more efficient way of planning events. We used to wait for clients to fly in for site visits but now because of technology we can meet more regularly. We can incorporate tech into their events to elevate them and offer virtual, hybrid and live event planning services.
Livestreaming, pre-prerecorded aspects, interactive chat rooms—those have all been great and people have embraced them. I don’t think we’ll ever see live events go away, but I think we’ve learned there are new ways to engage delegates, especially with our national and international clients. They’ve realized that they don’t have to go to every city—we can do an event in one city and everybody can tune in.
With growing popularity in virtual events, we’ve been doing a lot of curated boxes or dinners and trying to give guests unique event experiences from the comfort of their homes or offices. So instead of showing up a meeting and getting your little bag, instead you’re getting some amazing charcuterie at home.
What’s cool is how the industry has embraced supporting local. When we’re doing a national event now, we’re curating from each local community. Even though we may be livestreaming an event from Winnipeg across Canada, those boxes are coming from local stores in each city to delegates. I just think it’s amazing to see how communities have come together for events. It’s made me proud to be in our industry.
What can we look forward to from Emma Singh Creative?
The word creative is the word I’m standing with. We want to be leaders in the industry in thinking out of the box and bringing our event industry back but bringing it back stronger and more innovative than it’s ever been. We want to work with our clients on innovation and championing new ways to do events.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I want people to not be afraid of events and to reach out to their local professionals. Professionals can help them throughout the whole process. You have people like me in every province that can help you bring back your event safely and creatively.
I want to help be part of the catalyst to bringing events back and to make people feel safe and get us back to normal where we see and meet people in person because that’s when the magic happens.
Follow Emma Singh Creative on Instagram, Facebook, and on her website.
*Note: this interview has been edited for clarity, length and grammar.
