The July 2010 Atlanta Gift Mart is in progress as we speak. I haven’t been to a Big One in years. You probably know this, but they have four markets a year. January and July are HUGE. Massive. Impossible to see it all, impossible to navigate without a plan and extremely hard even with a plan. Spring and fall, not so big. I’ve been trying to get over there to sniff some candles. I really like Capri Blue candles. You’ve seen them at Anthropologie and some of you have seen them here in the shop. But I’d never smelled the whole line and I wanted to pick and choose the ones I liked the best and I’d got a card in the mail to present when ordering to qualify for the “tester program”. Sign me up! So that was my main purpose for attending.
Friend Jeri went with me Friday, her first time. I think she’s still stunned. First up, take care of candle ordering. We wandered around the three buildings, trying to follow the signs directing us to the correct building and finally…. finally arrived at the correct spot. Chose the scents I liked, which turned out to be the ones I’d ordered before by either having smelled them before or because I liked the names. We left there in search of food.
Located a company serving lasagna to everyone, no orders needed! Alright! And it was good. Then saw someone giving away Bobbles, waterbobble.com a reusable water filter bottle, the designer sitting there signing them. They were free and yep. We were in line. Oh, did I mention I only had money for candles? There was no ordering to be done anywhere for anything by me. So free was high on the priority list.
Went for a potty break and spotted a card at the sink saying another company was giving away a pair of flipflops. Yippee! We took off to get our flops!
Finally we start to actually look at some of the companies. (The sequence of events may be muddled in my mind.) In the temporaries I spotted a booth that I literally wanted to waller in. Live there. It was a Paris company. I was so impressed with the items and the display I had to try to sneak a couple of pics. We’re not supposed to take pictures in the temporary exhibitors. Got caught. The French accent said, “No pho-tos please, no pho-tos, please!” I said how much I loved their stuff – didn’t say I couldn’t afford $86 for this or $150 for that – but gushed over their stuff and asked if they had a catalog. She handed me this. This, this, disappointing… sheet… that I’d already picked up.
This is about life size. You can click on it to see a greatly enlarged version. So, OK. Better than nothing, but not very revealing. I asked again about a catalog, and she just nodded at the piece of paper. I asked about a web site. She nodded at the piece of paper. I cropped the company name and other info. So I’ve checked out the web site. You cannot enter without being a registered buyer with an international VAT number. I’m just a rinky dink vintage seller. I have no VAT number nor am I inclined to get one. Why do the companies do that? What are they afraid of? That we’ll copy them? Undercut their prices? The people who know how to do that are gonna do it without seeing pictures of their stuff. And they don’t have to give out the prices without a request. I’d show you the pictures I took, but sadly, they were so blurry even I could barely tell what they were.
After that, we did a little clothes shopping at the sample sales. I got a couple of tops. Jeri and I split up while I was clothes shopping and she found a place to buy some watches in bulk. She has a booth and sells a lot of newer type things. She’s burning up the woods right now with the Power Bands.
On the way home I realized I forgot to hand the candle reps the card to qualify for the “tester program”! Horrors! Had to go back the next day.
Part 2 of this post, coming tomorrow, will be sub titled The Ensuing Hilarity May Or May Not Have Involved Free Marguritas
Wanda, you write so well! I really want to go with you to this one time!