Dear Diary - the Smitten Kitten Blog

We’re back from our looooong week in New York for the National Stationery Show.  What a busy week we’ve had!  The show itself went really well and we’re super happy to have gone.  We met interesting peeps, wrote lots of orders, hung out with fellow designers and even managed to squeeze in a few nights out.  It was awesome!  There’s so much to cover, so I’ll be splitting it up into sections.  Let’s start with the pre-show.

Fire Fire!

Even with our best intentions to leave Toronto early that day.  We didn’t get out of town till about 4p.m. in the afternoon.  Lucky for us the border crossing went smoothly and we managed to roll into Manhattan at around 12:30 in the morning.

My lovely friend Lisa and her husband had graciously invited us to stay at her apartment (So sweet of her!) since they were away that very same week to go to a wedding in North Carolina. We’re sad to miss seeing them but happy to have free accommodations.

No no that’s not pictures of her apartment.  Don’t worry we didn’t burn it down.  This is the building across the street from Lisa’s apartment.  No kidding it’s like 4 buildings down from hers across the street!  Turns out there was a fire that same day at around 6p.m..  Which means if we would’ve left town on time we would’ve arrived at the scene while it was still burning!  But by the time we got there at 1a.m. everything had pretty much settled.

I don’t think anyone was seriously hurt but there was a lot of damage.  The Hong Kong Supermarket which was attached to this apartment building doesn’t look so super anymore with their roof caved in.  The gas station directly across the street was (thank goodness) not affected.  But the gas attendant was super grumpy about his gas station being roped off and closed for days as part of the crime scene investigation.

For the week we stayed at Lisa’s, this particular street we lived on was the safest in all of Manhattan. 24/7 there were policeman outside our building.  Roping off sections and making sure no one tried to cross the police line.  We would’ve slept better at nights if only they didn’t turn on their sirens every so often.

You talkin’ to me?  YOU talkin’ to ME?

Friday we arrived at the show bright and early for setup.  I thought if I could get most if not all of the setup done today, I could have at least a half day off on Saturday.

Setup was mostly trouble free except for one union worker lady who decided she wanted to make life difficult for us.  Our booth was located on a “freight free aisle” which means that nothing, no boxes, no crates are allowed to be on our particular isle (so that fork lifts and dollies can wheel around the show a little easier).  This is all fine and dandy except that there were stacks of crates dropped off right along this aisle, and union workers kept dropping more massive crates there. This made it very difficult for us, and everyone else on the show floor to maneuver around.

I wasn’t going to say nothing except while setting up our booth flooring, this particular union worker lady kept coming by and telling us to move our boxes into our booth. I tried explaining that we couldn’t shove the boxes in right this minute ‘cos we were putting our flooring down.  Our boxes weren’t big and they weren’t even in the aisle, just sticking out a couple feet.  We were doing our best to take up as little aisle space as possible and she had plenty of room to get by with her lift truck.  But after about the third time of her giving us the “this is a freight free aisle” lecture, I’ve had enough and finally pointed down the aisle and said “well what about those huge crates you guys keep dropping off here?  Those are on the aisle aren’t they?”  Caught without an answer, she gave some lame excuse about how those crates don’t count ‘cos they’re waiting in line to be moved.  Errr… then shouldn’t you pick regular aisle to line up those crates?  ‘Cos this is either a freight free aisle for everyone or it isn’t for anyone.

I don’t think she took too kindly to my “back talk” because a few minutes later, when the boy and I came back from moving another load of stuff (weaving and dodging all around the show floor ‘cos our aisle is blocked), she was standing in front of our booth with a notepad, like she was a cop writing us a parking ticket or something.  She says we’ve broken the union rules by installing our own lighting, that we’d have to take it down and pay for electrical installation.  Go see the union supervisor she says, no doubt thinking that she just got us into trouble.

Trust me I’ve read this exhibitor package more than a couple times and everything we did was up to code.  As an exhibitor at the Javits, you are not allowed to hang any lights that require you to climb a ladder (which we didn’t), you’re not supposed to do any electrical work UNLESS you are in a 10 x 10 feet booth (which we are), and have ordered 500 watts or less of electrical power (which we did).

Our lighting set up involves strapping bar lights onto a cross pole (all done on the floor), which then my very tall boy picks up the cross pole on one end, with the lights already strapped on, hooks this end to the front / top part of our booth on one side, then hooks the other end on the other side.  No fuss, no muss, and most importantly, no ladder!

Her beef was with these lights I used, which she called “track lights”.  You see if she could call them track lights then under no circumstance can we put them up ourselves, with or without a ladder.  If they were not track lights then we’re just fine since we followed the rules otherwise.

You see how frustrating this is?  It’s like splitting hairs!  I went to speak with the supervisor who came over to inspect the booth and sure enough we’re just fine.  The lights we used could be called “track lights” or “bar lights” he says, just depends on who’s saying it.  He did make the boy reach up to prove that he was indeed tall enough to have hooked the pole on without a ladder (which the boy easily proved) so we didn’t get in trouble or anything, just wasted a bit of time dealing with someone who had a chip on her shoulder.

We managed to get about 90% of the set up done on Friday.  By 7p.m. we were too tired to work on the remaining 10%.  I didn’t mind coming in for a little bit on Saturday so we left.  Dinner was at this Vietnamese restaurant in China Town.  A bit dodgy looking on the outside but delicious on the inside.  We had our fill of soupy noodles and went back to Lisa’s to chill.  Another delightful surprise awaits us.  Lisa had HBO on demand.  Yup.  ON DEMAND!  I’ve been dying to check out this series called “True Blood” which is not yet available for us simple folk in Canada.  Oh what do you know, True Blood was on demand.  Squee!  Three back to back episodes later we went to bed exhausted.

The calm before the storm

The boy took a trip out to Belmont Park on Saturday since the show didn’t start till Sunday.  He had previously arranged for a press pass to have  access to the paddock and back stretch.  So with camera, video camera and tape recorder in tow he left bright and early for his long trip up to Belmont.  On the way he snapped this picture knowing that I’d get a kick out of it.

I wonder if Barbie knows that she owns a shop that sells human hair by the pound.  Hmmm…

Since I was flying solo today, I wanted to get to the show as early as possible to finish set up and have the rest of the day off.  Plus I was so flustered by the union lady incident yesterday I forgot to drop off my vintage Wallpaper Cards and new tote bags at the Best New Product Display, and had only a small window of opportunity to drop it off today (between 9a.m. and 11a.m.).  I really hustled to get to the Javits on time.

I always worry a little bit that one day (maybe today?) I’m going to arrive at my booth only to find that it has somehow imploded or self distruct.  Not that it’s badly constructed or anything but trade show booths are lined up so closely next to one another that if one booth falls over, likely the domino effect would make a bunch of other booths topple over.  You know I’m going to file this under my list of things to worry about when I have nothing else to worry about.

Of course everything is still standing just as I’d left it.  I quickly add the finishing touches to my display, fuss a little bit with my lighting and put out my signage.  After I dropped off my products at the Best New Product display, I’m done.  Free for the rest of the day.  Woohoo!

I caught the complimentary shuttle up to the Grand Central Station.  Usually I would catch the shuttle to Penn station but after waiting for the Penn shuttle for over half and hour, I got impatient and just hopped on any ol’ shuttle that was going to get me outta there.  I found a nice little deli up by Grand Central, ate a leisurely lunch and people watched for a bit.  Then hopped onto the subway and headed to Union Square.

Union Square was PACKED!  It’s Saturday afternoon so everyone was out shopping.  After leaving a couple of my favourite stores empty handed (what’s wrong with me?!), I figured I’d head into Soho to check out the new Top Shop.

This shop ain’t the tops

I used to shop at Top Shop when I was 15 (living in England), so I was super excited they finally opened in North America.  I have to say though that I wasn’t super impressed.  Now don’t shoot me for saying this and maybe it’s because I’m older now (and wiser of course), but their clothes seemed really young.  They weren’t doing anything that H&M isn’t already doing and it was a little pricey for what it is.  There were a couple nice dresses in their Kate Moss collection (which was drool worthy) and some sweet shoes but everything else seemed suited for the club hopping, pa-pa-pa-poker faced crowd.  Don’t get me wrong I love Lady Gaga, I’m just not IN love with her, and since I wasn’t planning on whipping out my glow sticks to go clubbing this week, I didn’t buy anything. I did promise myself to come back for the Kate Moss dress if Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters came to place an order with me at the show (which they didn’t. Dammit!).

I walked all the way from Houston Street to China Town and stopped along the way in a slew of stores.  Anthropologie (didn’t buy anything), Muji (nope nothing there either), Daffys (still nothing!).  In fact the only thing I bought were a pair of cute $14 kung-fu slippers from Pearl River Mart, and I made myself buy those because I needed a pair of “my feet are so sore from wearing heels on the concrete show floor I’m going to cry” emergency shoes.

Once the show starts it’s going to be hectic.  You’re on your feet all day doing a lot of talking, a lot of smiling, a lot of selling.  Some people find their focus before a show by doing Yoga, some stay at home with a nice dinner, or relax at a spa.  I find my focus by running around Manhattan, butting elbow to elbow on the subway and shopping my little heart out.  I feel totally refreshed.

Let the games begin!

Categories: Field Trips, show review.
Tags: fire on lower east side, national stationery show, New York, NSS review, set up, shopping, Top Shop.
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