Case study · Slack · Experiential production · IPO-era build

The $7M customer education center that opened on schedule

Slack's first branded built environment, produced from creative concept through opening day at one of the highest-stakes moments in the company's history.

The before

In the run-up to its NASDAQ IPO, Slack needed a flagship physical customer experience: a space where users could experience the product firsthand. The brief involved three senior agency partners (OMFGCO on architecture and interior, R/GA on content, O+A on permitting and legal), plus SC Builders as general contractor, fabricators, AV vendors, and architects. A white-box to full custom build, meaning every element of the environment had to be designed, fabricated, permitted, and installed from the ground up. And as Slack's first branded built environment, the project sat on nobody's existing roadmap. It was ambiguity with a hard deadline.

What we built

  • End-to-end production leadership from creative concept to opening day, on a $7M budget with vendor-level accountability.
  • Multi-agency coordination across OMFGCO, R/GA, and O+A, keeping three senior creative partners aligned on one build.
  • A 3,000 sq. ft. modular environment with 6 interactive digital content modules translating abstract software features into physical, intuitive product education.
  • Fabricator, AV, GC, and architect management through the full custom build, including city permitting.
  • Internal partnership-building for a cross-functional project that demanded contributions no department had planned for.
  • Workplace UX and brand collateral rollout across 10 global Slack offices during the same IPO transition period.

The wins

  • Opened on schedule and on brand during the IPO window.
  • $7M budget delivered without overruns destabilizing the build.
  • Three agencies, fabricators, AV, GC, architects, and permitting held together with no dropped thread taking down the opening.
  • Established experiential design protocols the team kept using after the project.

One honest footnote: the space completed in March 2020, just as pandemic restrictions prevented its public launch. The build delivered. The world had other plans for the ribbon-cutting.

"At Slack, she led a $7M brand center from concept to launch, building systems and wrangling cross-functional partners with ease." Kristy Tillman, Head of Global Experience Design, Slack (former manager)
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