New York International Gift Fair

For the past week I have been attending the New York International Gift Fair looking for new products for the LadyBug Shop. This Fair is the premier gift and decorative accessories market in the United States. This semi-annual event fills 638,000 net square feet, including the entire Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and several additional exhibition halls. The 45,000 national and international attendees are drawn from major retail outlets, specialty retailers, distributors, catalog companies and others. There are more than 2,800 firms exhibiting in eleven major merchandise sections of the Fair, including international sponsored groups representing Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Canadian Province of Quebec, South Africa, Thailand and United Kingdom. I had a great time--and now have sore feet. I walked for miles and met with most of our current wholesale suppliers and met many new ones. Dan, who works in New York, was able to lend a hand for part of the show. He served as my scout, searching for new products as he walked up and down aisles quickly. I followed, placing orders. Thanks to a lot of great work that Zoe helped me with prior to the show, I was able to restock much of our inventory that was greatly depleted over the past holiday season. During this show we were particularly interested in expanding our line of turtle products, and were delighted to find many excellent new turtle items. We were especially pleased when we found suppliers who produced nice items in both ladybug and turtle variations. Obviously we are not the only ones who see the harmony of the two as a pair! Over the next weeks we will be presenting some of the new and exciting items we purchased at the Fair as shipments arrive and we put them up on our website. So watch this space!