Hello folks,
thought I might share with you some of my most recent adventures! It's that time of year when we produce a new collection of super new oaf wears and show them all off to people with fancy stores at trade shows. This year we hot footed it across to Sunny Barcelona and then to the more moderate climate, yet slightly over cast Paris.
First Stop the Bread and Butter show in Barcelona. As well as showing our new top tees and sweats I spent quite a few manic days with my fellow oafs whipping up a small lazy oaf village that would come on the journey with us. We spent two days with pva glue and felt up to our elbows, and Sarah and Becky were hard on the sewing machine pedal to get things ready to go go go!
It has been argued that the village was taking priority over actually getting the tee's ready, but damn it, look at them, they're the best bloody bit. Holy bananas those houses are vomit cute.
I squished their little faces in a large over priced box to get over to Spain just a few hours later we were in Spain to meet them. We got busy setting up the stand, I spent a little while arguing that I needed to create a forest of tree's, Katie said it was too much, I told her to shut up. She changed her mind = Gemma felt smug for being right.
We met loads of great people in Barcelona, and I ate a lot of Mini Baby Bells, which isn't unusual for me and also some spanish biscuits.
We went to a few parties, which as always were full of people determined not to have fun. Wes stumbled in to a nike party where me and Mr Jack D were reunited. Sadly it was a clumsy and hazy affair resulting with me talking garbled rubbish to someone in a bobble hat for 3 hours straight, and being the most unprofessional person in the world the next day at the show. I couldn't lift my eyes higher than people's shoes for fear of vomiting or falling over, I burried my head in a house for most of the day = evils of drink. I hate you Mr Jack Danials.
The only thing that made me do a small jump of joy that day, was being given a bike, yes a bike, it's brilliant, I can't reach the pedals (bum). Yayyyyyy, a bike a bike a bike!
It's a beauty alright! It's about 7ft long and has our brand new logo emblazened on it. It is currently in the window of our superette store, where people are allowed to stroke it gently. These bikes are all custom made by Pimp Garage and each one is special. So a big Gracias to you guys!
We picked up quite a few new stores while we were there, including re orders from our favourites too.
So it was a quick return to the big smoke for a few days then off to Paris.
We were quite excited about this one as we have never shown in Paris before, although we already stock some great stores there.
We were selected by a panel as a fresh label to show with 4 other unique brands at WHO"S NEXT in a 'special' area, woo hoo!
We discovered the special area was....Ping Pong tabels. We each had a ping pong table to display our goods, I didn't really understand the relation. But none the less I quickly unleashed my magic weapons, my little felt buddies and within some hours had created my Lazy Oaf village. Ping Pong = 0 Lazy Oaf = game, set and match, i thank you.
Consider it pimped!
The show was 4 days long, and I have to say that parties this time were a No No, I had poisened myself in Barcelona, no ammount of mini baby bells could fix that. Instead I whiled away the evenings finding bizarre restaurants to eat at where I pointed at pictures of meals I would like to eat, and watching Ian 'lovejoy' McShane in DeadWood. I love the McShane, he cusses a lot and shoots people in the head. Oh and we did the Bateaux Mouche at night, when in Rome and that.
We also had a very successful show in Paris, picking up several new stores such as Aime cube (Paris) and Penelopes (Brescia, italy) to name a few.
But most of all I met the best dog in the world called Pepe. This French Bull dog belonged to Jewellery designer Adeline Affre. Pepe rocked up to the show on the last day to help Adeline take care of business. I was allowed to look after him for 10 whole minutes. He is the best business man in the business. Within minutes I had attracted a whole gang of buyers and secured a very healthy order from a Japan store. Bless you Pepe the wonder dog! Adeline also made me ring for my sausage like fingers, below. I love it.
Then back home to London. We closed Superette for a whole 4 days and set it up as a show room for our UK buyers. We gave it a good scrub and bought some cakes including a selection of mini Battenburgs and french fancies. I also whipped up some mean looking hot chocolates for our guests.
Katie rode the special bike up and down Brick Lane accosting strangers and I was in charge of making sure there was breakfast (the best job).
The showroom was a success, and guess what we got more orders, some new and some from our loyal lovelies!
We want to say a massive thanks to everyone that visited us and said hello. And a big thanks to all who ordered at the shows. It's the end of the wholesale season for me again, phew.
It's nice be back and sit in my big chair and start to relax for a few minutes with my special mug of tea.
Oh, and just so you know the new collection will be online at the beginning of March.
Has anyone seen shipwrecked yet? I see lazy oaf has a little starring role, what what.
