Monday, June 24, 2013

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.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

We Made It To The Dallas Market

We made it to the Dallas Market.  This is a trip we take at least 2 times a year, if not 4 times a year.  And going to the Dallas Market is like shopping in the biggest mall ever, but you never take anything home with you!
Well, sometimes there are samples to take home and there are tons and tons of catalogues, tote bags, occasionally candles and flip flops.  Some showrooms at certain times of the year do sell their showroom merchandise to make room for the newer products.  But we never have room in our car to take anything back to Tulsa.
Here's what happens when you arrive at the Market.  At the Registration Desk you show your driver's license and get a badge with your name and your store name and city.  You also get a catalogue which lists all the company lines and showrooms and temporary booths and even Cash and Carry booths.  The January and June Market catalogues are a good size, since those 2 Markets have several floors of temporary vendors and Cash and Carry across the street from the main buildings.  You never ever want to carry around any extra weight....so one catalogue is all we take!!
For 20 years we have been going to the Dallas Market.  When I step through the door I really do feel like I am home.  I know the floor plans, the showrooms, the bathrooms (highly important), the restaurants and our sales reps.  Sometimes we literally run into retailers from Tulsa or other cities. 
One of my most memorable "run ins" was the year that The Farm Shopping Center had done a promotion using men's ties....one was a cow design.  I was rounding a corner when I literally bumped into the tummy of one of our Farm retailers.  I didn't have to look up to see his face....that cow tie was a dead giveaway that he was a Tulsa retailer!!
We shopped for 4 days, from morning to late afternoon.  We spend most of the day walking, standing, looking at merchandise, talking about merchandise.  And when time comes to get in the car and go back to the hotel or out to eat, we are definitely ready to sit down for a good long rest.
I'll write some more about our trip to the Market, but I just want you to know that some great new merchandise will be coming our way this summer and this fall.  I will drop a few hints in my next blog.

Friday, June 7, 2013

A Salute to Mary Engelbreit

Today I received an email with video of Mary Engelbreit receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greeting Card Association.  Mary is the first ever person to receive this Lifetime award and truly she does deserve the honor of being the FIRST.
Mary Engelbreit was certainly a pioneer in the world of an individual artist carving her way without any experience in the greeting card or gift industries.  Her achievements, her example was a role model for others who were working their way through these industries.
I remember very well my first encounter with Mary Engelbreit.  Although she had been around a bit, I first saw her card and limited gift line in a glass "hut" inside the renovated train station in St. Louis when I went to my Washington U. college reunion, about 20 years ago.  I was completely taken with Mary's whimsy, her colors, her love of life, her wit and I couldn't wait to get back to Tulsa and tell my Sweet Tooth partners that we absolutely had to bring Mary Engelbreit to our store.
We did exactly that and some people eventually referred to our store, not as Sweet Tooth, but "the Mary Engelbreit store".  Mary's fans loved her black and white patterns and dots, her big splashes of red, her "flat egg" flowers and especially her cherry designs.
People have attempted to follow her example and to use her ideas in their art, but no one has truly managed to do it as well or as beautifully as Mary did.
Over the years we grew the Mary line....cards, t-shirts, dinner ware, paper products, stickers, dolls, art and posters, etc. etc. etc.  There was unwavering support for black, white and red and of course, cherries.
In the last few years Mary's gift lines have disappeared.  She continues to produce cards through American Greetings and some little memo pads, pens and so forth which are exclusively sold at Michael's stores.  Several of my Mary friends can tell you that I was often motivated to call them and leave messages when I found something new at Michael's.  At home I have an entire drawer full of memo pads, journals, and so forth.  Our garage is a storage for many of Mary's gift pieces which I kept and between Mary and Betty Boop at least one-half the flags which fly outside our home are full of Mary's art.
Mary is still around but there is very little if anything in the gift world for us to carry in the store.  I wish it weren't so.  But I wish Mary at least 21 more years of success with her art and I hope that someday a few shelves in Sweet Tooth will be lit up with the bright and happy colors of Mary Engelbreit.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Women: Engineers of our Economy!

One of our favorite trade newsletters is called GiftBeat.  The June issue had some interesting articles....thought I'd pass along a bit of information to you.
Did you know that women account for 70% to 80% of consumer product purchases?  Women, as the article says, are the "gatekeepers" to every kind of customer.
What this data really means is that women control a bunch of money.  Women's income has grown nearly 30% since 1990...although we know that very often women's paychecks are smaller than men's paychecks who are performing the same jobs.
I guess where women get some of their "power" is that men actually shop less...the power of shopping means a great deal in our economy.
The article I am referring to also says that people are having fewer children....an average American family has 2 kids.  But those kids are getting products and experiences faster than ever.  With less kids, I suppose many families have more money to spend on each one.
I remember sharing a bedroom with my sister.  We had 2 twin beds, a dresser, 2 closets and one desk and chair.  Fortunately my sister was 5 years younger than me, so when I needed the desk, for example, to do homework, my sister hadn't reached the stage of having a lot of homework.  Nonetheless, our room wasn't very big.  I don't remember us spending too much time together in the bedroom....except to sleep, of course.
With 3 kids and an average household income (my Mom didn't work outside the home) we didn't do a lot of shopping.

Our society is also aging...a good thing because people are living longer....unfortunately for men, more women live longer than men do.  That situation leaves more assets in older women's hands. These statistics seem to say that throughout a woman's life, she controls more of the money spent, except perhaps for major purchases like homes and cars.
Younger women are not waiting until marriage or settling down to purchase products for their homes.  If they have more disposable income, younger women are buying those nicer items which, in the past, they often listed on a wedding registry.
For us retailers, these statistics are meaningful.  They help to shape our plans for the store, our purchases of merchandise and our advertising expenditures.  The GiftBeat article tells us that if we meet the higher expectations which women have for the sales experience, we will also be meeting the expectations which men shoppers have.
When we bought our store 21 years ago, I never realized that there is a bit of a science to owning a retail store.  In addition, I think that consumers are more sophistocated and educated than they were in the past.  It is important to the success of a retail store that research, serious thought and planning and constantly recognizing what customers expect be applied to every buy for the store.  With the Gift Market coming up in a few days, we have a lot of preparation in front of us.
Stay tuned.