Years before our website existed, we started selling our signature lacquer art trays to boutiques. The way we found these boutiques was by vending at trade shows. We now have several sales rep groups across the United States who help us cultivate relationships with thousands of stores, but you can still find us at major gift trade shows twice a year.
Trade shows give us the opportunity to introduce new products to our wholesalers and to chat with them face-to-face about what we love – and what they love – about our current collection. We vend at up to 15 trade shows every winter and summer, a few of the big ones being the Atlanta National Gift Show, Dallas Total Home & Gift Market, and NY Now.
Our sales team sent us a few quick phone snaps of our booths before busily selling to buyers, so you get to have a small peek into how a rockflowerpaper product lands in your friendly neighborhood boutique.
C.C., our National Sales Manager, organizes all the trade shows, and she’s described it as planning 10 weddings at the same. From making sure all of our samples get to the show, to finding people to build the trade show booth, to organizing cocktail hours, to being there to make sure everything goes smoothly – we won’t bore you with the whole list, but it’s long!
Sometimes the trade shows take place at a venue where our sales reps have a showroom that we are a part of along with other brands. Depending on the show, we might still go to help set up, chat with retailers, and get a feel for what's selling that season.
Other times, like at NY Now, we will plan and set up the booth from start to finish. C.C. drew up these floor plans for New York, which we snuck some photos of when they were on the conference table. Every single detail of the booth is planned out beforehand in order to avoid as many surprises as possible. But sometimes, you can't avoid a mad dash from the Javits Center in Manhattan to the IKEA in Brooklyn to grab unexpected booth accessories. And sometimes, we’re at the show on the last day until midnight breaking the booth down.
All the work is worth it, though! We love visiting with our wholesale customers and connecting with our sales reps. We love seeing familiar faces and making new connections. Not only do we strive to build an amazing brand, but we also hope to help amazing brick-and-mortar boutiques keep their businesses and communities thriving.
While everyone was unfortunately too busy to grab pictures of the finished booth in New York this year, here's a fun video from NY Now from February 2017 promoting our Spring 17 line:
What does the end of our spring trade show season mean for you? It means that you’ll soon see our fresh, spring product popping up in stores near you, AND, also here on our website. Stay tuned!
We've designed tons of never-seen-before products, and we can’t wait to show you!
