May 8, 2017

Meet Mikhail Liberman of WOW! Balloons in Downtown

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mikhail Liberman.

Mikhail, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Immigrated from Moscow, Russia 1981, Brandeis University – theoretical math, graduate school NYU – computer science. 1988 start working as a programmer, 1989 lost the job. Started selling flowers on the street ‘just for now”. Next year we have started our flower store (in Baltimore MD) with my wife. She turned out to be a genius designer, I did everything else – service customers, sweep floors, clean flowers … But, when I had a moment, I had fun with balloons. I created different things and put them outside to attract attention to our store. And, little by little, learned basics. Then my employees sold me to my first decoration job without asking me!

That was a big step. We started offering new service that took off very strongly. Without any schooling, I had to invent million things and it was very interesting. Then I have discovered my love – huge sculptures and special effects.

Very soon we have discovered that flower business is going down (the area where we had the shop had changed demographically) and balloon decorations go up.

Then it was a divorce, the store was closed, my 3 year old son and I moved back to Boston. I re-started the balloon business from scratch. Boston turned out to be a much better place for my work, the business was perfect for single parent – I work from home and be there for my kid, the actual decoration projects are mainly on weekends.

A lot of things had happen since then. We opened offices in several cities, have done several very interesting big jobs. Looking for big, may be even non-commercial projects.

Has it been a smooth road?
– I did not have money or time to go and learn the trade. I had to invent things on the way, some small, some big.

– It is a very new art, most people had never heard about it. People know 3 balloons on weight and may be balloon arch. Most people that saw our portfolio had never seen anything like that. 99% of my customers have no concept what they can get from a balloon decorator.

– The most expensive part of business is staying in business. Balloon decoration business depends of the state of economy more than most: the very first thing one can live without is balloons. Several times since 1990 we had periods when demand was exactly zero.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We decorate special events, from small home birthday party to huge conventions that occupy huge convention centers and everywhere in between. We decorate with objects made out of balloons.

Special event industry, in a scene, is a Cinderella’s ball: by midnight everything must turn back to pumpkin state – I e everything must go – tomorrow this space will be used for a different event. So ideal decoration must look great, be easy and quick to take down but it does not have to be durable – it is better if it is single use, disposable thing – no cost of moving and storing the decorations.

Another words, decorations made out of the balloons are ideal.

So, in WOW! Balloons, Inc., we are known for two things (at least):
1. If a client needs something unusual, never seen before, unique –
2. When there is a big difference between decoration budget and the space to be dressed up: say you have “reasonable” budget of $5K, but you have a huge space for a trade show and no usual tricks will do.

We will come up with a solution – we had for 26 years!

One other thing that is my personal love is special effects: explosive balloons, balloon drops, etc.

I do not know if that is setting us apart, but what we are proud of is that we like “crazy” projects: I am willing to invest a lot more time in preparation than a standard project would take, we would consult and help a client with such a project, we would provide a discount instead of downgrading the design.

One more thing: safety and peace of mind:

~90% of our customers are first time users of the service like ours. Then do not know how it works, what can go wrong, but they clearly realize that there no second try. So most of them are nervous.

Very early on we have realized that we are in business of customer moral support. We answer the phone, return phone calls and e-mails as soon as we can, usually within an hour. We encourage clients to call with any questions they possibly can have. If we see that it can help, we let them know that we have finished preparations for their project, we have arrived on site and event send them pictures from the site of the progress of the decoration process.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yes, Boston is a very good place for Special Event Industry professionals.

Contact Info: