The SF Summer Gift Show ended on Tuesday. As I noted after the February show, I can tell that I’ve been in this industry for awhile now as I look forward to meeting up with people I see at the show, vendors, reps and buyers. As far as shows go, this was a slow one. Not a lot of people walking the aisles. Comments were made that the Vegas show might be upstaging both SF and LA shows. Typically summer shows are slower as well. So that explains some of the lack of traffic. How I wish I had started this back in the day when Gift Shows had aisles that were crowded with buyers! Like every other industry, this has been affected by the internet. People don’t shop in stores as much as they shop online. Buyers don’t need to attend gift shows as they can do their buying online and research different companies on the web. The good news, sales are up 35% for me this year over last so I am growing. Thank you god!
Next up, as far as shows go, I take off for the Pacific NW. I absolutely love driving up through Northern California into the mountains of Southern Oregon and then on to Portland. I’ll drop off my load of product and displays for the Portland Far West Nursery show at my friends Eve and Paul’s, spend the night and then head up to Seattle. I’ve got a new rep group, Stack & Co, in Seattle and will get to meet them all personally when I spend time in their showroom in the Design Center for the Seattle Gift show. Their reps cover the states of WA, OR, MT, ID, and AK so I’m hoping to see some new business there as well…
Now to get all these orders entered into Quick Books!
