09 May Four Highlights of Atlanta Int’l Gift & Home Furnishings Mkt (Part II)

Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market: Part II The first time you set foot in Atlanta and hop a cab, you feel welcome! What a wonderful feeling!! I guess its that fine Southern hospitality, but its amazing how our team felt it in every nook and corner of Atlanta. From the kind taxicab driver who helped Andrea (my bestie and right hand lady) haul a heavy glass cabinet to the loading dock, to the hotel staff who served us shrimp tacos at any hour, to all the amazing vendors and staff at AmericasMart who ran for tape, shared their ladder and more. Our time in Atlanta was a whirlwind of busy days, long nights, and plenty of heaving lifting and hauling, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We could not be more grateful for the wonderful friendships we formed and invaluable insight we garnered from good-hearted, generous people from all over the world during our debut at AmericasMart.

High Design is the exclusive “Juried” section in Building 1, where beautiful new products debut. Aisle 500 where our booth #502 was against the art wall in the juried section of Atlanta Int’l Gift & Home Furnishings Market

There were many highlights of our time, eight days, in Atlanta during the January 2013 market, but we’ll start with these first four:

1) High Design rocks!!!  We loved being selected out of hundreds to exhibit in this white, bright beautiful space in Building1. Fashion rules in High Design with all the new, up and coming, design products:  from beautiful currency jewelry by Thad Cline, to bedding by new designer Antage Bleu to many long established companies as well.

Me with Danielle Mason Hosker, owner of the new luxury brand called Antage Bleu, also a first timer in High Design.

2) Our booth was a huge success! With having never done an international show with our own booth, and knowing we only had a certain amount of space to make our fixtures and pillows display beautifully, it all went off without a single hitch…miraculous!!  It felt awesome to receive such high compliments about how gorgeous our booth looked and so great to see buyers come in and say “You’re pillows are so different!”.  That’s the idea, and we loved receiving such wonderful feedback, thank you!!

Our custom two piece fireplace mantel designed by Brandon Smith of D. Coop Spatial Design. Perfect for storage and displaying our VIP pillows featuring vintage brooches. Also our glass case that held all our jewels!!

A corner snapshot of our booth, #502, with our assistant Patricia Tankey, who always keeps us laughing and smiling.

Me and my best friend from high school, Andrea Vanhoven, who flew from Vermont to help Patricia and I do our first International market!

3) Our neighbors (and AmericasMart staff!) were AWESOME and incredibly helpful!  How lucky we were to have our booth smack in between Seven Barks and Wendy Stevens. This is rather a long story, but here’s the short version. David Goodman is doing marketing for Seven Barks and Rebecca Ray, so he was the first person we met.  We instantly fell in love with him as he is the most generous and helpful man, even going to the extreme of going out and purchasing tape for us during set up.  This is a man who is a retired marketing expert from Vera Bradley and charming. We are so grateful for all the tips and advice he gave us on the spot!!  He also introduced us to Rebecca Ray, an incredible designer of American couture handbags using tanned leather. She was so kind too lending her expertise…she inspires us immensely.

Then, then on the other side, was seasoned veteran Wendy Stevens who designs these amazing “museum-quality” industrial handbags from steel. I wanted to collect every single one!!  And directly across from us, were more helpful neighbors, Mark and all his assistants, of The Maxiga Group, who sell the coolest kitchen gadgets and more. Whether it was loaning us a ladder, watching our booth so we could take a break,  giving us shrink wrap and boxes, or sharing valuable tips and LOTS of very helfpul advice, EVERYONE helped us tremendously!!  It made our very first experience absolutely memorable and wonderful!! Thank you!!! (And a special thank you to Peter Sullivan who made our lighting and walls perfect and Elizabeth Moss, the queen bee of High Design who answered a zillion questions).

Seven Barks (to our left) full of fun stationery, wrapping paper, cool dog and horse notecards and more.

Wendy Stevens (to our right) and her highly sought-after fashion handbags made of steel and leather. Please go to her website and drool…www.wendystevens.com.

Here’s part of our section of High Design: David Goodman our “on-the-spot-advisor”, me, Andrea and Mark, the owner of the Maxiga Group with his amazing staff.

4) A special thank you to Kathleen Allen, with Veritas, my Texas mentor, who if not for the nudge she gave me last spring (‘Deborah, it’s time to do Atlanta!’), we would not have taken our brand national. And to my incredibly supportive husband of 29 years, David Latimer, who TOTALLY surprised me (which is rare!) with a dozen GORGEOUS red roses waiting for me in my hotel room after a full exhausting day of setting up our display.  Thank you with all my heart!!!

Gorgeous Veritas hand cut and polished glass vase.

Me and Kathleen Allen, of Veritas from Dallas Texas.

My roses! My beautiful, beautiful roses that my husband of 29 years surprised me with!

Keep watching our blog, cause we’re just getting started.  Next you’ll see what’s involved in setting up a booth like that and meet our first East coast account, Be On Park. In the meantime, please see more photos on our Facebook Fan Page, and designs from the show on our website Deborah Main Designs.  XO PG

P.s. If you want to receive our quarterly Pillow Talk newsletter, be sure to sign up on our website. Here’s the Spring 2013 one.