We have just returned from five days in the great nation
of Texas, and as much as I enjoy spending time there it is always nice to get
back to the jungles of Florida. We covered all the Dallas Market buildings top to bottom,
talked to a lot of people, and learned a few things:
- Crowded parking lots and long lines at the ladies rooms
do not automatically translate into good orders for the exhibitors.
- Duck Dynasty, the hot license last year, is dead and
buried in the gift industry. Fine by me.
- “Me too” design and product lines are everywhere, both
at the designer and the manufacturer levels.
- The highly touted and exciting gift industry “recovery”
of the last year didn’t happen.
- The Dallas-Ft Worth Metroplex is continuing to grow at
an obscene rate and will one day cover the entire planet.
While the Dallas show is not nearly the size of Atlanta,
most of the big players have showrooms and the rest are represented somewhere
in the buildings, so it’s a good place to get an early read on the market. What we did not
expect was the language we kept hearing - evaluate, retrench, slow, reduce exposure, wait and
see, soft market - all those words that strike fear into the hearts of
designers and agents. Say what? Yes, there has been this elusive uneasiness
hanging in the background, it’s a bit quiet but weren’t we all convinced that
it had turned around? Of course, it wasn’t all bad news, we did get some
business done, saw some of our new product and now have a better focus for the upcoming
Atlanta market – but it will be very interesting to see what the consensus is
going to be there.
Hmmm...
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