Market 2013! Part one

Hi everybody!  We just got back from market in Atlanta where we ordered our "everyday" items and our Christmas merchandise(which starts shipping in July).  My blog after market is always really long so I've decided to split it up into 3 sections: Everyday, Halloween and Fall, and Christmas.  This first entry is where I'll show you the pictures I took of the everyday things that will be in the store very soon.

For those of you who don't know, there are 2 big markets every year in several cities.  We like Atlanta the most because they have a lot of home decor and gift items.  We were told that there were over 73,000 people that attended this market. Yes, it's that big.  It's overwhelming!  We spent 5 days picking out merchandise and we even split up into 2 teams to get it all done.

Market is made up of lots of showrooms with different wholesale companies.  Some have just a few items and some have huge spaces with a large range of goods.  Some just set things on ugly shelving and others make huge, wonderful displays.  I usually just take pictures of the good ones, but let me tell you, we've had to weed through a LOT of bad ones to find the good ones.

This picture below is Park Hill.  They are a little more rustic/farmhouse than our store, but we have found that we can pull pieces of theirs and make them work with our look.  They are PHENOMENAL at displaying.  One year, we won a contest with them and they drove all the way to our store from Arkansas to set up a display for us.  They were the nicest people!  I'm so glad we still order from them.

We ordered these bottles.  They are open on the bottom so you can plant under them in a pot.  It's like a little bottle terrarium.  One of our Spring themes for this year is "Terrarium."  We are going to set up a whole section in the store of containers and moss and little accessories for you to make your own terrarium.  I'm so excited about it!

We ordered these 2 pieces of furniture too.  They are shipping soon and I can't wait to see them in the store.  We will have a little more of this bare wood look this year.  Can you see the numbers stenciled on the chest back there?  It is a really cool piece.

Below are some of the things we will be pairing with the bare wood pieces.  It's like an old Southern barn kind of look.

Below is a picture of a window looking inside a showroom.  They make little displays to entice you to come inside.  It's really hard not to get distracted by everything here.  Sometimes we will have an appointment with a sales rep in one of the showrooms and find it nearly impossible to get to them without getting drawn into another place.  Would you want to go look inside Kalalou?

P.S. we do sometimes order from this one, but this time they had a lot of floral stems that we would have to price at about $30/stem.  Hmm, not so sure most of you would go for that!  

In addition to Park Hill, another favorite of ours is Peacock Park.  The owner loves European antiques and designs her reproductions based on her favorite finds.  Some of her displays in the showroom are mixed with REAL antiques.  See the wardrobe?  Yeah, not for sale.  Some of her old things are for sale but they are way out of our price range. We ordered lots of little accessories here along with some french ornaments for Christmas.

For this market, we had a goal to try to order more large pieces and not so many little tiny things.  Sometimes we get caught up in the little accessories and forget that people come into the store looking for some very specific things, mainly: desks, chairs, mirrors, dressers, storage, hooks, and tables.  We tried really hard to find those things.  It's not easy though! Things at market seem to either be cheap looking or really high end.  There isn't a lot in between. (That's part of the reason we opened a store. We saw a need for cute things that were affordable)

Here are some furniture pieces we ordered.  I got 2 of the black cabinet and one is going downtown to our space in the Collective.

People always ask for mirrors so we snatched up these pretty pieces.

Another great mirror.  My biggest regret in this particular showroom is that we ordered a french settee and i forgot to take a picture!!  It's probably my favorite thing we ordered and I didn't take a picture!!!! Ugh...

We went out to dinner a couple of times when we weren't so exhausted that we opted for room service.  This is my mom and brother.  He was nice enough to come along and help me do the Christmas ordering.

In another showroom, I found some great things to go in our new natural wood area.  We decided to mix the natural wood with leather and they had a couple of great pieces. This cabinet below matches a tall one we have right now.

I am so in love with this loveseat.  I can't wait for it to ship!!!  It's one of those things that makes us sad when it sells.

Here are some examples of the lamps I ordered.  This one is mercury glass.

The lamp below is going in our terrarium area because it has leaves on the shade.  I love that the shade is a square shape.

A little fleur de lis lamp!  How cute!  We have a lot of fleur de lis collectors in St. Louis so I knew we had to have it.

This is a window into a really fun garden inspired showroom.  They made it feel like we were actually outdoors.

I wish we could put stone on our floors like this one.  That would be really fun.  Not sure how to pull it off though.

This trestle table has already gotten to the store!  We had been home for 1 day and this order had already arrived.  We couldn't believe it.  Isn't the color fabulous?  If only I had enough room....

I ordered a TON of pillows along with a huge rack to use for display. Below are some examples of what I got.  I tried to get a lot of colors and styles so that you could find something for any room.

Here's the rack I ordered.  It's going to be full of pillows.  So exciting!  It will be fun to play with them.

 The pillow showroom has larger pieces of furniture too.  I ordered a pair of these chairs.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of tufting.  It's my favorite look.

 The picture below is where the temporary booths and cash and carry is located.  Again, it is HUGE.

I wish I had taken a few more pictures because this is just a tiny fraction of what we ordered.  Wouldn't it be cool if I could wear a webcam or something?  Then I could show you guys everything lol.  I will work on part 2 of my market entries tonight.  It will be the pictures of things I ordered for Fall and Halloween.  I hope you enjoyed this year's look into market.  If you're curious, you can read my past blogs about market.  There are even more pictures in my past entries!  Stay tuned for part 2!-Lindsay