Dealing With Reality
By Quinn Halford -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 8/1/2004
With the summer gift show season halfway finished (as of this writing), the consensus is that traffic is down at the major shows, but order writing is holding steady. Specialty retailers are struggling, and the survivors are keeping a close eye on expenses by sending fewer buyers to shows, or opting to attend smaller regional shows to save on travel expenses. As one candle vendor in Dallas told us, "It's no longer the boom years of the late '90s, but there's still lots of good business out there. People have just got to get over it and deal with today's reality." He and many others were pleased enough with their order books.
Dealing with today's reality is what our three 2004 REA finalists in the Promotion category have done. And they are survivors: one celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2003, while another greeted its tenth year in business by re-introducing itself to customers. One had a budget of $50,000 to spend on advertising, while another made ends meet by including the whole community in a lunch event for 300 guests. Yet they all promoted their stores in unique ways. As one of the finalists says, "Why be average when exceptional will do?" You can read all about them, beginning on page 30.
New servicesWe're introducing a couple of new features at Gifts & Decorative Accessories. The first is InfoLink, which provides instant information about our advertisers' products via the Internet, eliminating the lag between filling out a Reader Service card, mailing it, and waiting for a response. By the end of the year, InfoLink will be available for products mentioned on our editorial pages as well. For complete information on how to use InfoLink, turn to page 33.
The second new feature is Gifts & Dec Product Wire, an email service debuting in September. On the first and third Monday of each month, Product Wire will deliver news about the latest product introductions reported by our editors, featuring up to eight new products, some with pictures, all with contact numbers and click-through website addresses.
Both services are another way of dealing with today's reality.
