It’s been a wild week: we started last Monday in Miami at the China Sourcing Fair, then spent a long day on Tuesday (and the week before) prepping to leave early Wednesday for the Atlanta Gift Market – got back about 10PM last night (Sunday). Pretty much a full week of non-stop tap dancing.
Oh, the glamorous life of a licensing agent.
We did, however, accomplish a lot. The traffic at the shows had the appearance of being down, and that is also what a number of our clients were reporting, but word is the retailers that attended were serious about writing orders and most of the manufacturers seemed OK with the volume. Not up but not down either – as one of them said regarding business nowadays, “Flat is the new up”. There does seem to be a strange disconnect between the current economic malaise and the future plans of licensees – lot’s of new projects in the works, a ton of designs going out and some really good things happening, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed that Washington doesn’t screw it up. Again.
Now, normally this would not be cause for celebration at most shows, but after walking every aisle of the China Sourcing Fair, we were happy to NOT find even one of our designs. Meaning that we found no unauthorized product. It has felt like the overseas knock offs are slowing (Etsy is a whole different nightmare), perhaps due to the anti-counterfeiting efforts that are ramping up worldwide. I am not quite naive enough to think that the problem is all better now because of this one event but perhaps we are headed in the right direction.
Let’s hope so – I have enough to do…
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