This past week the Design Team hit the road to the Winter Las Vegas Market.
A massive home and gift show with hundreds of thousands of products and vendors all looking for buyers that range from boutiques to big box stores. Reps and buyers travel to these markets around the country searching for goods to stock their shelves with. The challenge, as always, is to find products that are small batch unique goods you won’t find in everyday stores and bring them back to the pines.
It’s best to bring walking shoes, because there are miles to put on. Endless floors of stores and goods, and crowds of buyers navigating the mayhem. Vendors lure you in with food and drink while others have a limited supply of inventory and if you don’t get there early it might all be gone. Making your way through these endless markets is tricky and it’s easy to get distracted.
We are very fortunate. Our team somehow window shops for hours, slowly focusing in on something. It seems like intuition. They kind of find a scent, then wander through slowly browsing past stores, booths and countless products. Occasionally something catches their eye, but they usually move on without it. With time and patience, they lead themselves up to something worth investigating. We love goods that are handcrafted, and everyone just seems to magnetize to them. The team has gotten good at finding a needle in the haystack.