Even when you’re from Minnesota (15 years ago and counting)
a temp of 10 degrees accompanied by a howling wind is freakin’ cold. Welcome to
Atlanta in January. Fortunately it didn’t last, a few days later it was up into
the 40’s, however we were quite happy to get back to Florida: 80 degrees and
humidity. Ahhhh.
The January 2015 Gift Market was good. Noticeably better
than 6 months ago. A lot like one year ago. Which concerns me a little bit,
because one year ago everybody was trumpeting to the heavens what a great
market it was, setting sales records and selling like crazy. (See here). On our
end they were looking at new collections, expanding current ones and asking for
more. Then… nothing exceptional happened. The following July market was ho-hum
and just OK, traffic was down and in between those dates the expanding lines
didn’t expand. We sent out a ton of designs after Jan ’14, but then some of
those “sure-thing” projects became less sure (not that THAT is anything new…).
So, while it’s always great to experience an up market, we have worked a few
dozen of these and I am not remodeling the office just yet. Keep your fingers
crossed, do more good work and ask me in July how January went.
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| ATL Bldg 3 atrium |
That being said, we did have a few observations. Traffic
was good but still not up to previous levels; elevators were sometimes jammed,
some ladies’ rooms had lines and occasionally people were sitting in the
hallways eating the free lunches. As opposed to all of them all the time, as is
the case in a really busy market. Everybody we talked to, bar none, said it was
a good market. Our clients are planning things, but in a more cautious way: they
(mostly) know what they want and aren’t asking for a lot of fluff to consider
later. Instead of “maybe” we heard a lot more “no”, which actually is a better
answer. A number of them have reduced their footprints in the rep showrooms,
streamlined their operations (and unfortunately staff) and tightened the purse
strings on product development. Apparently lessons were learned over the last
few years.
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| ATL Bldg 3 atrium |
There’s always a little bit of everything across the
showrooms, but as we walked we noticed a lack of man cave stuff, Duck Dynasty,
moustaches and non-traditional Christmas. There is definitely a nod toward rustic and
homespun, coarse fabrics, hand stitching and earth tones. There was also more
artist promotion and artist signings, which is good and we hope will continue.
What I wish wouldn’t continue is the “me too” products that show up in so many showrooms.
Everywhere you turn someone has their version of Kathy’s Primitives, or Kelly
Rae, or Glory Haus, or Natural Life, or Simply Southern, or anything that has
sold well. We spend a lot of time going “Hey – that looks like (fill
in the blank)” - but then it’s not. Just another reason to keep those fresh ideas
flowing.
So there ya go—another successful ATL market, and in the
words of one of our clients:
“I think we’ve got it this show.”
Sounds good, I'm in.
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