Always always being on the hunt for new stuff for our customers….sometimes gets tricky.. Where haven't we been? What is new? What haven’t we tried?… so this spring Amy and I headed out to Round Top Texas…that was an interesting experience, but to sell as we like to, the prices are a bit high and the shipping a bit tricky.. So what else can we do..? This summer we headed to Los Angeles to the gift show.. Thinking this would be the place where fresh ideas start, we couldn’t go wrong. Day one we flew to LA and basically by noon Pacific time we had flown from the east coast, and already covered a third of the show… this was definitely not looking good … we had covered an entire floor of the convention center … each placed one or two orders and not seen anything that even remotely inspired us…we were slightly worried, but we were staying in a super cool hotel,(Hotel Figueroa) and figured we would at least have a blast in LA. Day two, we start the day with the greatest breakfast ever from the Pantry, a small diner that has never stopped serving food 24 hours a day since 1924.. They say the door has no key and they have never been without a least one customer…I just love stuff like this its so awesome…
Anyhoo we decide to head back to the show and hope for better luck on this day. The section we arrive in today is what they call cash and carry which means you get to carry all of your purchases around with you all day… well, I don’t know how many of you have ever met me and Amy, but when we go shopping we’re not playing around. When we love it, we buy everything…. So it was like a cartoon of two insane people shopping because there was tons of cool stuff for us to bring back home to Virginia and spice up the next Design House.
We also met extremely cool people from all over the world involved in the Fair Trade industry. Fair Trade is basically when people are trying to help people from all different regions of the world who are impoverished, and can be helped by being able to sell their products to people like us. We met a rug maker from Afghanistan, who demonstrated the process of making a wool rug.. It took 6 hours to make one 3x5 rug and the process was insanely tedious.. Fluffing wool with sticks… piling it into a giant pile ..
Sprinkling it with boiling water… then rolling the pile with his feet for hours in a bamboo mat… all for an insanely small amount of money.. They then told us that most of the money goes to trying to get the rugs out of the country as the Taliban won’t let the Afghan people trade with anybody , so they kill the delivery guys.. This really drove home for me how difficult it really must be for them to function.
Anyway it was super educational, we met amazing people from Nepal, Columbia, and places all around the world, and were able to buy cool stuff, and help people out...so it was a great experience.
As we were relaxing by the pool that evening, going over our amazing day, some guys were setting up speakers… we asked what was going on, and they told us there was a party for the people attending the gift show…sweeeeeet!!!!!
The next thing we knew, there was the best DJ, the coolest bongo players.. And everybody was dancing… including the Afghany rug roller!!! How great is that…So now we are inspired to be more conscientious buyers, to try to be helpful to some people less fortunate than ourselves… and to have an awesome pool/dance party!!!!
So next Saturday night we shall have a super fun… after hours dance party at the pool of the Design House! What a great way to spend a nice summer night.. Cool people good music and fun dancing.. This will be an after hours (meaning the stores will be closed, so we can all have fun..party.. Join us if you like Sat 8-7, around 7:00.
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