New York, New York

Cute-ture took New York by storm this week, showing our lovely little people's luxuries at the New York Gift Show. The show is known as 17 miles of aisles...Quite overwhelming to the senses! That being said, it is a wonderful place to be inspired, find unique items and shop for one's store!! And happily for us, it seems we inspired and were unique enough to have a very successful show.

Cute-ture was in the Metropolitan Pavilion which we love (so much more than the enormous Javits Center) mostly because there is a great French coffee shop - called Telegraphe Cafe next door which actually makes an extremely good latte. They also have soup and sandwiches and are not at show prices (as in not so overpriced that our entire profit from a $20000 sale is spent on a sandwich for lunch). New York is somewhat known for its coffee but as a coffee snob - I have to tell you, its awfully difficult to find something that an Aussie or Italian would consider drinkable...sorry New York - but your coffee sucks. So finding a 'cuppa' next door at a reasonable price was quite a find indeed.

The other bonus of the Metropolitan Pavilion is that the Container Store is around the corner. For those of you not familiar with doing tradeshows, the biggest winners in the tradeshow business are Ikea and The Container Store where it is cheaper to buy your stand (display cases, bookcases etc) than to rent it from the show organizers. This is an international standard mind you - buy a clothing rack at The Container Store for $30 or rent one at a show for $110....What would you do???

The funny thing about each show we do, is that the little finds we have - such as the cute cupcake containers (found at $1.99 at... The Container Store), to put our handsqueakers in, become as hot an item as the squeakers themselves. I guess that makes us somewhat successful merchandisers and the store must wonder why they have a sudden rush of buyers wanting those funny looking cupcake containers. Last show it was miniature plastic chandeliers that run on batteries which I used to dress up bookshelves turned into little clothing cupboards that were the hot display show item. Inspired indeed.

So New York rocked - and now we are back in LA contemplating shipping all those orders or moving house.... Oh the joys of being snowed under - even if it only snowed once in New York.