First show - *GASP* - of the season

Ah, autumn in Tampa Bay (or, more precisely, Dade City), where it still feels like the inside of a pair of pleather pants after a night of salsa dancing.

I'd say doing an outdoor show in September is pushing the season by at least a month. It's sweltering, it's a crap shoot with the weather (which we utterly lost this time), and people who choose to walk around a parking lot in this kind of heat are just plain crazy. Well, perhaps not as crazy as the people who choose to set up their booths and stand there before them...

Big bro Steve, though, did great business at the show. Our photos sold well. I did well studying last year's sales figures and we took the correct items for the show. It made for a relatively easy set up - fewer items of china, porcelain, and glass; and more fiddly things like the jewelry. It made (thank goodness) for easier cover up and break down when the storms came. We gave up and went home early on Sunday after the third storm had just started; I had already changed once out of my completely soaked clothes, only to go through it again. Neither of us was mentally prepared to do it one more time, and frankly, it takes a toll on the stock that is not weatherproof. A couple of torrential rains came through on Sunday, and Bob and I had preplanned how we would move the tables for quick cover up, and had the tarps to the ready. Some other dealers were not so fortunate, including the man across from us, who had books lying on the pavement on blankets. When the ground turned into a stream, he lost a fair amount of inventory. But, as he noted, he had plenty more where they came from. (At this remark I shook my head mentally - I can't abide throwing any of my hard found treasures away!)

At one point we were down to a single table all piled with bits and pieces of items that hadn't yet been packed away, under our tent. Bob was methodically wrapping and packing the bigger stuff, and I was trying to make sense of what was left on the table so it wouldn't get all tangled up upon unpacking once we got home. We pretty much had just a straw basket of earrings and a tray of bangle bracelets that I was trying to get put away. In the midst of this chaos a Mexican family - mom, grandmother, and 3 small kids - started rooting through the basket and trays. We sold 5 items in the last 15 minutes to them, while we anxiously looked at the approaching clouds. It was one of our best sales of the day.

Now we have a 2 week respite before, thank goodness, an indoor show in St. Pete. It's still quite early - the local population will not have swelled to its seasonal numbers yet - but we'll be comfortable in the air conditioned splendor; and it will be an opportunity to show off what we've collected since the last season.

Seasons change, and so do we

One of the two stores closed. We're in Patty and Friends still, and in two booth spaces instead of one. August was our best month yet, and we ran a glass sale to further things along during this the slowest season. It helped us to wean down our impressive (read = overly large) glass inventory that came with the original purchase of the business. There are only so many vases and bowls that you can carry to any given show! And we never seemed to whittle down the numbers.

The glass sale did the trick.

In the meantime, my brother Steve has sent on an incredible quantity and quality of jewelry to us for selling. Some truly exquisite items. Looking at our past record of jewelry sales, it makes sense for us to expand the selling space of this type of merchandise. I've been sourcing display ideas, trying to stay away from the conventional locked glass cases that you see, crammed with everything under the sun. Yes, they are easy to travel with and set up; but as I pointed out to Bob, they are visually overwhelming, and when was the last either one of us stopped and asked a dealer to unlock a case in order to take a closer look at something? The answer is: NEVER. We just keep on walking.

I think for us the key is accessibility, good visual merchandising, competitive pricing, and keeping the items sorted by color, type, or perhaps customer preference. We now have enough cuff link and heavy chain necklaces to have a "Manly Stuff" case, and we'll see how popular that proves to be.

The other experimental approach we are doing is working with another jewelry designer who will incorporate elements of our jewelry into organic, woven bracelets and necklaces that she makes herself. We are always left with bits and pieces of jewelry that have become separated or broken off from where they started; Cecile will be able to repurpose those items into new pieces that retain their charm.

The website has been stumbling along, with no help from me (as evidenced by my lack of posts here). I'm averaging a few sales per month, with international sales to Canada and Australia starting to happen. I have some great Wedgwood pieces that we found this summer and also Bunnykins that I have yet to add to the site.

As I feel better and sometimes not so well, I devote my time and energy to the site, to blogging, and to the business overall.

This picture is of a Wedgwood Queen's Ware vase, flared and fluted, with blue oak leaves in bas relief and glazed overall. This type of stoneware was reintroduced after 1946 by Wedgwood.