Strange, But True, Tales
By Maria Weiskott, Editor-in-Chief -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 8/1/2007
In trying to describe the experience of the market season to family and friends, I've used any number of adjectives: energizing, exhausting, inspiring, draining, exciting, boring, refreshing, tiring, consuming, renewing, galvanizing and surprising. And yes, even when I speak them I realize that many of those words contradict each other.
No matter the adjective, at market we always hear fun stories we can't wait to repeat. For example, everyone knows the “napkin story” about how a business contract was written on a cocktail napkin; or how the design of a building was drawn on a napkin; or how a telephone number (these days more likely an email address) of a soul mate was scribbled on a napkin.
There are a million napkin stories. We always wondered if they were real.
Not any more. At one summer market, we actually saw the napkin upon which a product was designed. It was in the Bill Curlee & Associates Atlanta showroom. The company: Chem Art, a 60-year-old business that licensed the Baldwin name and now manufactures Baldwin's collectible Christmas tree ornaments. There, on a shelf, was a sparkling replication of a Maryland blue crab. Next to it was the very napkin upon which someone had sketched the crab — in pen, no less!
Want another unforgettable story? (And true! However, the names have been changed to protect the innocent…) We heard this tale in the showroom of “XYZ,” a company with a very diverse collection of product that includes gifts, home decor, candles, art glass and inspirational angels.
One of the company's artists had an idea for a new line of angels, and developed a prototype in her kitchen using bread dough and culinary tools (a garlic press, for example) to refine and define the angel's “look.”
XYZ loved the new angel. The prototype was carefully packaged and sent to one of the company's factories in a very large Asian country where most gift products are manufactured these days. XYZ waited anxiously to hear whether or not the factory could replicate the angel in resin, and what it would cost.
A week went by. Two weeks went by. No call from the factory. Three weeks went by, and still no response from the factory in spite of repeated phone calls and emails. What could be the problem? It was unlike the factory not to respond.
Finally, a call came. The embarrassed factory owner asked if XYZ could send another prototype. Why? Because mice in the factory had eaten the original (bread dough) prototype.
Definitely a market story worth telling!
