Back Stage at the Gift Market

If you've never been to a Gift Market, you will just have to imagine 2 buildings....one with 4 floors and one with 16 floors attached to each other through several "indoor bridges" which are actually floors of showrooms connecting one building to the other.
Every showroom is brightly lit, generally full of different "lines" or manufacturers who contract with showroom owners to display and sell their products.
The World Trade Center with 16 floors is divided into floors which emphasize gifts or children's merchandise or jewelry or furniture.  The top floors are dedicated to temporary booths which are only available at the January and June Markets.
On those top floors  there are aisle after aisle of booths showing individual "lines".  To help sort out which is which, the floors are divided into categories like Gift, Stationery, Apparel, etc.  Walking these floors is not my favorite thing to do. Frankly it is known among Sweet Tooth staff that I am a speed walker when it comes to those floors.  I stand at the front of the aisle, glance down and somehow automatically decide that a particular aisle is not worth walking through.
I will admit that we have found some fun, new gift lines in the Temporaries, as they are called.  But my preference is to purchase from a showroom where showroom owners have vetted the lines they carry and can be counted on to help us out if we run into a problem.
The Gourmet Food Court is laid out the same way as the Temporaries, with aisles of booths.  When we first started going to the Gift Market, we would walk up and down these aisles, full of cheese straw vendors, jellies, jams, packets of spices and other such foods.  Rarely was there a great candy find at the Dallas Market.  But if you remember the Peppermint Pig which we carried for several years, we did find that company at the Dallas Market.  I miss that Pig!!
We always assigned Jeff to taste the cheese straws, the spicy dips and jellies.  Finally we simply learned to say "No" to offers of samples.  The funny thing is that many retailers who don't sell gourmet foods venture into the Gourmet Food area for a nice little snack or a dessert after lunch.  No one really seems to care.  I have noticed that over the years stores which were once strictly gifts are now stocking packaged food items.  Impulse gifts, I suppose. 
Cash and Carry is just what it sounds like....it is housed in a building across the street from the Trade Mart.  Talk about impulse shopping!!  You cannot walk through that building without thinking that there is a bargain to be had among the vast number of blingy jewelry sellers, knock-off perfume dealers, cowgirl outfits and so forth.  And that doesn't even describe the other half of the building which has furniture....antler chandeliers being very popular this year.
Cash and Carry is exactly what it sounds like.....the place where you can purchase any item and take it home with you.  Most people seem to be shopping for themselves, but some are actually buying merchandise for their stores.  Cash and Carry is where a few years ago Jeff got a great "bargain":  for $22.00 he purchased The Tingler...this contraption that you used to massage your head.  Not too long after that the price of The Tingler was down to $4.00 and this year I didn't see it at all.
Some bargains really aren't bargains after all.