The National Stationery Show 2008

Thursday over a week ago, my friend Amy from Goosey Press and I stepped off the plane at Newark to meet up with my sister Claire, who flew in all the way from Amsterdam just to help me at the show (now that's sisterly love!).

And wow, what a whirlwind week it's been! After exploring Times Square Thursday night, we spend most of Friday setting up our booth at the Javits Convention Center. Having done a few other trade shows in the past, everything came together quite smoothly – if you ignore our struggle to put together some simple Ikea tables that required not only a pair of pliers (which we did not bring) but also a union-paid carpenter's muscle power to screw in all the posts!


I must admit, the end result was very eye-catching (and no, I did not have to bribe the show officials to lay down matching orange carpet in the aisles).


I had splurged on a corner booth and the difference between a corner and a regular booth is really amazing. Because of two fabulous neighbors (Hello! Lucky on the left and Little Oranges of California on the right), our quadrant of intersecting aisles felt very open and airy.

Speaking of neighbors, I was thrilled to have Emily of Little Oranges right across the aisle. Not only was she as nice as could be, she was funny and entertaining to boot! Plus, she freely shared sweets from her candy jar (a nice little sugar boost at the end of a long day).


So, how did the show go? In one word: great! I met a lot of amazingly talented vendors (just love the folks at Ink & Paper and Night Owl Paper Goods), opened some fabulous new accounts (including Broadway Paper in Milwaukee and Bloomingdale's in NYC) and made some great press contacts (Grace from Design*Sponge stopped by; check out her five-part show review).


The Fresh Style Card File was definitely the best seller, but buyers (and press) also loved my new line of imprintables and paper table settings due out later this summer.

What a great initiation to the National Stationery Show – can't wait till next year's!