We are safely back from our first Harrogate Home and Gift, I will forewarn you, this post may be a bit longer than the usual as I seem to have a lot to say on the subject….
We stayed in a nice little pub in a small village about 10 miles from the center of Harrogate, it was so empty the first night we wondered how they were managing to make a living but the 2nd night an unexpected party of roughly 50 people turned up – they had been on a local treasure hunt – this meant the landlord was run off his feet in the bar and his lovely Wife spent the evening cooking for them all!, I’m sure the till total looked nice at the end of the night though :), anyway, there was a guy also staying at the pub, we’ll call him L, it was quite amusing because he must have been outside having a cigarette while we were inside talking to the landlord about Lindsay Interiors and what we do etc, L then walks in and tells the landlord that the product his company were selling at the show this year was just a big old bunch of tat, needless to say we all found it highly hilarious and indeed when we did come across L the next day at his stand it was a bunch of old tat :). Quite an interesting character was L, he’s from Essex and obviously loves a bit of a ducking and diving, in fact I suspect he thinks you’re not properly in business unless you are doing something a little underhand on the side. He had some strong opinions about what to buy, he strongly advised us to not concern ourselves with quality and just to buy meerkats as that is what everyone is buying right now, we obviously didn’t get our “Lindsay Interiors” pitch over to him correctly, he was of the opinion that if anyone ever wanted to buy anything of quality they wouldn’t concern themselves with independent businesses, they would just go to John Lewis :). I think I may have switched off at that stage, but he was a nice guy and I learnt a lot from him about various suppliers that were exhibiting and the general show “etiquette”.
The show in Harrogate is split over 3 locations within easy walking distance of each other, we arrived before 10am and left at 5pm and had not even ventured into the fashion, jewelry or stationary halls, some stands were incredibly busy – in particular one shabby chic style stand which didn’t have a single item that wasn’t cream coloured in some way 🙂 It was a little weird seeing Christmas, Valentines and Easter items all on show together, I found I was continuously reminding myself to focus, focus on my first order, check quality and look for new suppliers.
We did find a LOT of new potential suppliers, some of which are on the internet, I just hadn’t come across them yet, but also some which don’t have a website let alone e-commerce facilities. Maybe it’s an age thing because I did notice that the average age of exhibitors seemed to be near retirement or not that far off, there was a serious lack of young people….apart from us of course 🙂
One thing I wish had done in advance was to get my Lindsay Interiors “patter” down pat, why on earth was I not expecting people to ask what we did? and what is the correct answer, do we say we are an existing or new brand, due to go live soon or just omit the fact we are not yet live – they would see soon enough if they look at www.lindsayinteriors.co.uk. What I did tell them is that, we are new, we wish to sell interior accessories, we will be online only and will launch in September this year (2010), this was mostly taken well, with a lot of people happy to see we were new and wishing us luck. But one particular guy was not happy, in fact I wish I remember the name of his company because he was incredibly rude. They had some lovely items and we hung around for ages waiting for him to finish with a previous customer but when he came over and I asked him if we could take a brochure, he looked at me from over his spectacles and just said one word “shop?”, I asked him to repeat what he said as I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly and he then asked if we have a shop. I told him no, that we were entirely an online operation, he then proceeded to remove the catalogue from my hands and said “oh no, we don’t do that”, when I asked him what he meant he said they do not supply people who are on the internet, when asked why he explained in a haughty manner that if they wanted to sell online they would do so themselves. I was so amazed I forgot my own wonderful ability to be rude at the drop of a hat, smiled and walked away from his stand, he did manage to make us feel somewhat grubby I have to say.
The show was definitely worth a visit, I actually scrubbed a supplier from my “good list” as I was unhappy with their quality but I did add a lot more to my list. I only placed 2 orders at the show, I had saved my ordering for the show hoping there would be some good “order at the show” offers but to our surprise there was not, everyone I spoke to looked at me as if I had lost my marbles :). Bit silly really because if all your suppliers are online and have their products online why bother going to any of the shows? They may be free but it’s still your time…..I think once you’ve been once and checked out the quality of the products there is not much point in attending every year, probably bi-annual would be fine, just to check out new suppliers, we are however, still going to the NEC come September, this will be my Christmas ordering although I have already started my Christmas order list :). If we had to wait longer than 10 mins to see a rep to get an order in then we just moved on, why stand around like a lemon when you can just go home and do it online, madness.
There was a lot of reminiscing going on which seemed to take precedence over any potential customer ordering, there was a very laid back atmosphere which I was quite surprised about. The other area of surprise is how much “tat” is still bought and sold, we have it on good authority, actually two different authorities that a LOT of people in a LOT of places are buying wooden meerkats so we should buy them on a massive scale, we were also advised to buy rubber ducks with celebrity names on them, hmmm, just can’t even imagine why someone would buy something like that but they obviously do. However, they will not be buying them from Lindsay Interiors. We saw a lot of suppliers for “future” trading, much much higher quality than the standard – standard being good quality in this instance – I’ve noted these for future perusal, when we can afford to buy in the more expensive items to offer to our discerning customers :), an example was a set of silver plated mussel eaters, out of all the products at the show I think these were my favourite, closely followed by clocks made from wood and fabric from sample books, each number on the clock represented by a button, each clock was unique, 6 weeks delivery though, hmmm, then some beautifully unusual pictures mainly of beachy items that had been framed very artfully, I’m sure my description has not done it justice.
I think this post has become long enough so just a quick conclusion note – overall, definitely worth going, MAY think about going next year but it seems the Spring Fair at the NEC is the one to be seen at – appears the Autumn one gets slower and less busy every year…more importantly, we would have traded for almost a year and will have our patter polished :), oh and we’ll be another year older and so will fit right in 🙂
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