We recently connected with Samantha Leenheer and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

House of Joy came to be a couple years ago. Joy is my middle name and I love it. It’s a family middle name that my mom has, and I’ve shared with my daughter.

I’ve always been inspired by French couture houses in Paris. They are typically very big, beautiful detailed buildings. I wouldn’t want to say that I’m the most maximalist in style, but I’m not a minimalist. I love lots of architecture that you find in these couture houses. I love the idea of it being a home, not in the traditional home sense, but in the fact that you walk in, and the building has everything. You’ve got your atelier, you’ve got your model fittings, you’ve got the design center, you’ve got fabrication. Almost everything is done there.

I love that idea of like you go there and are fully welcomed and fully brought in. It’s very homey and hospitable. I wanted to bring those things into my brand. That’s why we have houses as part of our brand imagery. It’s where some of our structure comes in and where the rigidity of our text comes in. We want people to feel that inclusiveness and be part of their lives for many years to come.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

House of Joy is a design and planning firm that works on corporate, social and wedding events. Any events in anyone’s life we are equipped to handle. I first got started originally back in college when I was helping my family map out all of our travel plans. We have a big family and a large extended family, and mapping our rooms and from all of the universities and colleges across the country took a lot of logistics mapping (Who was in what car? Who was staying in what Airbnb?)

My first job post undergrad was for a manufacturing company. I was the solo person in their marketing department. I immediately gravitated towards their in-house events and their customer events. I slowly started to take over their holiday parties, their trade show events and their customer appreciation events. The customer appreciation events are where I had the unique opportunity to do white water rafting trips and horseback riding and sailing trips for their West Coast customer base. It was just such a wild opportunity.

Ironically enough, I then started working for my own wedding planner. I got engaged to my now husband and after my wedding planning experience with my wedding planner, we hit it off really well and I started working with her for a few years. While I moved, I would still commute back to work with her and it was such a wonderful experience. I knew events was something that I wanted to spend more of my time doing.

As a design and planning firm, we’re really there to kind of take all the stress off of planning any sort of event for our clients. It’s important to us that we can really be full service, and provide all of the support that you could possibly think that you might need, and ultimately create an experience that lasts through memories for many years.

House of Joy is uniquely known in the industry. Our clients particularly love our unique approach and getting to know our clients really really well so that we can create events that feel really reflective of who they are, who their families are, what their businesses are. We use color and our sensory design aesthetic to really pull apart those personal details and bring them into an immersive and inclusive experience for all of their guests or customers at the event.

This past year, in early 2023, we were named on The Knots ‘Ones to Watch’ list as a Mentor, which is something we’re extremely proud of. We were recognized for how quickly we’ve been able to define our brand and create a reputation within the areas in which we serve and curate events all over the country.

We love working with clients who want to dive into an experience. Clients who want to kind of pull the curtain back on their personal life and share a little bit about who they are, where they are and really kind of dive into more meaningful, more significant events for both themselves and their friends and family, as well as for their employees and their customers. When we do corporate events, we love digging into the sensory side extrapolating out the brand.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’m originally from the northern suburbs of Chicago. When I moved, I very much felt like a fish out of water. I leaned into what I love doing, which is really collaborating and working with other businesses to help them be bigger and better than what they are, and through that I built some really great strong relationships. These relationships have allowed people to trust me, have a lot of people to grow with me and have allowed me as well as our creative partners to lean on each other and really trust in new ideas and bounce new ideas off of each other. Growing together has been such a great experience.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I think one of my favorite resources is actually a TV show called ‘The Profit’ with Marcus Lemonis. He has a wonderful way of thinking about how businesses can be more efficient and more effective. One of my favorite things that you can gain from that show is how you can take little tidbits from every individual industry and really build them together, really kind of create and take lessons that someone else might have learned in a different sense, and actually bring that back into your own industry.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.houseofjoyco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/houseofjoy.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/houseofjoyco

Image Credits
Amanda Donaho Photography Megan Noll Photography Chelsey Barhorst Photography Molly Ann Photography Leslie Rodriguez Photography Knack Photo + Video