OUR STORY

Hi guys! We are Carla & Graham, welcome to our website!

How did Carla and Graham Meet?

We met on a video game website called 'OMGPOP' back in 2010. The site hosted games that you could play with friends and also offered matches with strangers that were randomly assigned - that is how we connected! We played a few games together and spoke a little in the chat section. This went on for a few weeks until we started connecting over Skype video chats instead. Graham flew to meet Carla in LA just a few short months of knowing each other where we hit it off in person! We were married not long after and Graham decided to live and work in LA.

Where is Graham from? 

Graham is from a small island off the south coast of England called the Isle of Wight. He lived there until he was 21 when he then moved to LA to be with Carla. That is why he talks funny.

When did you start Pickaparty?

Pickaparty came about when Graham first came to LA and was looking for work to do. He and Carla both helped out Carla's mom at the Paramount Swap Meet where they set up a section in her booth selling small toys and Graham doing his early face painting - with Carla later practicing balloon modelling to give to the kids. Customers naturally asked us if we did birthday parties, so we developed the brand 'Pickaparty' as a way to attend events and parties as entertainers. The name 'Pickaparty' comes from the way we offer parents fully customizable party packages - allowing them to 'pick' their preferred 'party'.

We attended the Swap Meet and did parties for a few years before Carla moved into a more conventional job in sales. Carla held that position for many years but it was never fulfilling for her so she eventually left that working environment. Looking for what was next for us, we returned to the Swap Meet to sell toys and do face painting and balloon once more - this time with our own booth! We started off with little resources for toy investments so Carla had to reluctantly sell plush toys from her own collection! As we grew our business over the following year we were able to branch out and get better inventory of higher quality and turn our booth into something that is still running today!

Our Pickaparty TikTok venture began with Carla providing balloon modelling tutorials where she obtained a small following. It slowly grew into a page that was more about us and our lives, the Swap Meet and everything else! With our background in toy sales, this naturally led us to incorporating toys into our TikTok page. It was the start of our current live sales that you know today and our amazing community developed out of that. Thank you all for following our journey, and we are looking forward to what the future has in store for us.