A turnkey family-focused event concept designed to increase traffic, dwell time, community engagement, and the mall’s positioning as a family destination.
Project Overview
Family Expos are large community events hosted inside regional shopping malls and centered around children, families, education, creativity, and local participation. Each event combines a Children’s Business Fair, hands-on activity zones, contests, workshops, demonstrations, and family-oriented exhibitors in one engaging mall activation.
Our goal is to create a repeatable event format that gives families a strong reason to visit the mall, explore different areas, spend more time on site, and engage with retailers, community organizations, schools, and local family businesses.
Typical Event Format
- Young entrepreneurs presenting their businesses at the Children’s Business Fair.
- Activity zones covering math, reading, coding, robotics, ocean life, sports, makerspaces, art, science, games, and other themes.
- Contests, workshops, demonstrations, performances, and educational activities throughout the day.
- Participation by family-oriented retailers, local organizations, schools, service providers, sponsors, and community partners.
- Promotion through family event calendars, community networks, social media, schools, partner organizations, and local outreach.
Benefits for Regional Malls
- Family Traffic — Creates an additional reason for families to visit the mall and can attract visitors beyond the mall’s regular catchment area.
- Family Destination Positioning — Strengthens the mall’s image as a place for families, not only for shopping but also for experiences, education, and community activities.
- Higher Dwell Time — Activities, performances, workshops, and the Business Fair encourage families to stay longer and explore more of the property.
- Retailer Engagement — Creates opportunities for children’s and family retailers to participate, promote products, host activities, offer giveaways, and meet customers.
- Marketing & PR — Provides strong visual and community-focused content for social media, newsletters, local media, public relations, and mall marketing campaigns.
- Seasonal Programming — Helps fill quieter periods between major holidays, promotions, and seasonal campaigns with meaningful family programming.
- New Audiences — Brings schools, young entrepreneurs, parents, clubs, nonprofits, educators, and community groups into the mall.
- Community Partnerships — Builds stronger connections with schools, families, local businesses, nonprofits, family service providers, and community organizations.
- Cross-Traffic — Activity zones can be distributed across different mall areas to encourage movement and support traffic to adjacent tenants.
- Repeatable Platform — The concept can become a recurring annual, semiannual, or quarterly signature event for the property.
Flexible Mall Integration
The Expo can be adapted to the available mall layout. A central event area can host the Children’s Business Fair and main activity zones, while selected activities, demonstrations, or retailer activations can be distributed through adjacent corridors, atriums, or secondary areas to increase circulation.
Organizer & Responsibilities
The event is hosted by the Kid-Friendly World Foundation, a nonprofit, tax-exempt Section 501(c)(3) organization registered in California.
Kid-Friendly World takes responsibility for event development and coordination and is prepared to manage the key organizational elements required for the Expo, including:
- Event concept, program, participant recruitment, and activity coordination.
- Promotion and community outreach.
- Coordination with young entrepreneurs, schools, activity providers, sponsors, and partners.
- Event-day hosting and operational management.
- Insurance and required compliance with applicable regional and mall policies.
- Coordination with mall management regarding layout, logistics, safety requirements, and retailer participation.
About Kid-Friendly World
Kid-Friendly World helps communities, shopping centers, family entertainment centers, hotels, destinations, and businesses create more inclusive, creative, educational, and developmental environments, activities, and events for children and families. Kid-Friendly World is also a member of ICSC.
Proposed Partnership with the Mall
We propose working with regional malls as host destinations for Family Expos. The event can be customized to the property, available space, local audience, retailer mix, and seasonal calendar.
The objective is simple: create a strong family event that is valuable for visitors, retailers, the local community, and the mall itself.
Please fill out the simple contact form below to discuss partnership opportunities, or contact us directly by email:
