We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rabiat Saraki. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rabiat below.

Rabiat, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Luxe Booth Houston (LBH) photobooth has been a labor of love for a long time and I sometimes struggle with calculating how long we’ve been in business whenever people ask. My response is always something like “Well total, we’ve been in business since 2016 but for real, we’ve been in business since 2020.” The reason I answer that way is due to the business model and approach I took in the initial years vs. the way the business is ran currently. No story is ever truly an overnight success and ours certainly isn’t any different. It took several years of dedication to running a business even when the profits yielded weren’t that great; several years of believing that we offered a service that people needed and several years of investing into industry related education and proper networking to truly scale up.

Our former years in business was basically me making the most of the obstacle that was running it from a completely different state than where I was. I lived in NY and founded LBH in Houston so it required me trusting that my onsite team would manage it like I envisioned when I wasn’t there and that the part time attention I gave it would be enough. Spoiler alert- it wasn’t! Sure, the business survived but it didn’t thrive. We got bookings occasionally and did okay but it wasn’t the business that I knew it could be. Fast forward to 2020 when Covid happened and I got the opportunity to work remotely and move back to Houston (it was the first time me and the business were in the same state since I founded it). That coupled with the extra downtime that I suddenly had due to the Covid of it all proved to be one of many strategies instrumental to our success today.

I hit the ground running with a rebrand and threw all the extra time I had into researching new photo booth softwares, products, tools, etc. I joined online groups and found a community of fellow photobooth owners who were willing to share tips and best practices and overall, just allowed the business to consume me (in a good way). I purchased a sleek, brand new photobooth and found somebody to manage our social media account on a consistent basis, which freed me up to become an expert on the services we offered and soon after, the business started gaining traction. We went from random bookings here and there to consistent inquiries/bookings by the end of 2020. I was fortunate that Houston had loose quarantine rules so people were still gathering and needed a photobooth, which we were provided according to social distancing practices. That period served as the perfect mix of slow and busy and allowed us to implement all our new business practices while being moderately booked. We didn’t have the stress of being too booked to perfect the important business things like marketing, service offerings, customer outreach, lead retention, etc. We had just enough time to learn something new and try it out at an event in real time right away.

Fast forward to 2023 and we’ve grown the business from having only one photobooth for 4 years to acquiring 6 additional booths in the last 3 years. We’ve also gone from doing only social events (weddings, birthday parties, Quincenearas, etc.) to producing large scale photo and video activations with Fortune 100 companies at some of the biggest experiential events in the country. Some of the events we’ve been fortunate to be a part of include the NCAA Men’s Final four, several music festivals like ESSENCE Fest, NABJ Conference, multi-city tours and more – how we started leveraging those big name clients and getting them to trust us with their photo marketing is a different story for another article-lol! Overall the journey from Luxe Booth Houston being a little business hobby to a big business corporation has been eventful but with strategic business tactics like networking with key people, showing up and being consistent and keeping God in the picture, we’ve grown and continue to scale up!

Rabiat, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We offer traditional photo booth experiences with props and custom designs for events like birthdays, weddings, grand openings, etc. but also offer elevated productions with fully custom buildouts for corporate activations. With us, you can book a 360 video or open air photo booth experience complete with a backdrop of your choosing, custom props with your event theme and more or you can get a fully branded experience that anchors a brand’s key messaging to a fun experience. We really just listen to the client and their goals and collaborate with a team of professionals to get it done.

The main thing we want future clients to know is that their event matters to us as much as it does to them. Like, we really thrive in ensuring that the smallest details are incorporated and tweak onsite as needed to ensure that. Our booth attendants aren’t just going to press a button and send your guests off with bad pictures. Nope! We make them feel comfortable from the moment they step in the booth, help them loosen up, pose them if needed and just ensure that the final product with your event’s branding is something they’d be proud to post on social media or put in a frame!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Like most businesses, we sometimes struggle with relishing in the moment and understanding that we’re currently living in what was once a dream. We’re always just in go mode and plotting the next big idea, trying to fine tune the current ones, etc. But one thing that’s certain is that while we may not always take time to smell the roses, there are people (both clients and peers) who are watching from the outside and impressed with what they see.

Hmmm, what do we think helped build our reputation within our market? I would say it’s just our business ethic and genuine connections. We are always professional but relatable in our dealings with clients and take our follow through seriously. I don’t know that there’s a client out there who could say something bad about their experience with us because we don’t allow there to be bad experiences. We have repeat clients that feel like family because they loved their experience with us the first time and just continue to make us a part of their family (or brand) celebrations. That’s important.

Our peers (fellow photobooth owners) aren’t our rivals because we believe in community over competition. If we know something and they don’t, we share willingly and vice versa. So yea, I would say those are the things that have helped build our reputation within the photobooth market.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We’ve had to unlearn and constantly have to remind ourselves that slow periods are inevitable in business and don’t equate failure. Every industry has its busy and slow seasons and it’s easy to freak out when the bookings slow down but experience has taught us that, it eventually picks back up. So now when it’s the slow season, we just take the opportunity to either rest or focus on the admin side and wait for things to pick back up.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.luxeboothhouston.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luxeboothhouston/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077451116258
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2iTduXfa4IvQamg_J8XlLw
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/luxe-booth-houston-houston

Image Credits
Luxe Booth Houston Seyi Hassan Theo Ewins