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

Crazy for quotes, words and letters

 

It seems like half of what we sell every day is something with a quote or initials.  Words are extremely popular right now to wear AND decorate with!  These are some of our most popular items in the store.   For those of you looking for gifts for the holidays, these are a great idea for friends and family. 

 

This one is really simple and kind of rustic. 

Everyone asks us to ship these windows but it's so expensive!  They're large and bulky.  We sell a ton of them in the store.  They're made by a local artist called Old Barn Rescue.

This Coco Chanel one is the same artist.  A lot of these go into little girls rooms!

http://thewhiterabbitstl.com/catalog.php?item=1406&catid=35&ret=catalog.php%3Fcategory%3D35

http://thewhiterabbitstl.com/catalog.php?item=1409&catid=35&ret=catalog.php%3Fcategory%3D35

 

 

 

Tiny charms are always popular.  These are $12 each.  I love them because they have gold and silver on them so they go with everything.

 

The mother of pearl initials are very popular as a gift.  They're so classy!  $18 each

Last but certainly not least are the books cut into the shape of letters.  We have these in our Brentwood store and in the co-op downtown.  At $12.50 each, we can hardly keep enough in stock to keep up.  They are all one-of-a-kind so it is really fun to open the box and see what we've gotten in each shipment.

 Do you love words, quotes and letters?  We definitely do!  If you like any of these items, you can always call and we'll hold one for you or ship it.  314-963-9784

Thanks for reading!  We hope you're having a great holiday season!!-Lindsay

French Script Paper Tabletop for the Holidays

 

Hi all, I wanted to share our most recent fun event with you.  We were lucky enough to be asked by St. Louis Homes and Lifestyles magazine to be a part of their annual holiday tabletop tour. We had to decorate a table and then give a little presentation about it every hour last Saturday.  The event raised money for Ranken Jordan so were were thrilled to participate.

 

The first thing we did was pick a theme.  This was so easy for us because our favorite holiday collection in the store is a french inspired theme with a lot of script paper elements.  How fun is it to decorate a tabletop with something unexpected like paper?

 Above-Eiffel tower box by Cody Foster and bird with script paper wings from Bethany Lowe.


This treetopper/table decoration designed by Lesa Davis is another of our favorites.  It was definitely one of the main inspirations for the tabletop.

 

Our next task was to pick out a special treat for visitors, so Sarah came up with the idea to do a hot chocolate bar.  Here's the blog where she came up with the idea.

We made a huge batch of hot cocoa and got biscotti, peppermint bark, whipped cream, marshmallows, and peppermint flakes.  It was so fun!

 

Here is the actual tabletop that we came up with.  Since Emily worked on it more than any of us, we decided that she should do the presentations. 

More paper elements

 

 The runner in the picture below was just a piece of old burlap that Kristin made paper flowers for.  She just hot glued them onto the ends and voila!, we had an inexpensive runner that tied into the rest of the theme.  Don't be afraid to make little inexpensive creations like this!  If you add them to pieces you buy, it will look like you spent a lot more money than you did!

 The centerpiece of the table is a big mercury glass jar with some juniper sprigs and branches.  Emily clipped some of the script flowers onto the branches to match the flowers on the napkins.

Emily tied little wreaths with bows onto the back of each of the chairs around the table.  Aren't they darling?!  She used a ribbon with a script pattern so that they would tie into the theme.

She used little juniper berry sprigs that have just a touch of blue in them.  To tie in the blue with the table, she brought in some light blue napkins.  She used pine as a charger too.

 

Emily did a great job with the tabletop tour and we've had some wonderful customers tell us that it was their favorite one! I'm so glad we were able to participate this year and I hope we do it again next year!  What is your favorite part of the table?  We'd love to know!  -Lindsay

 

If you like anything you saw, you can get in on our website!  Here's a link to the holiday section of our site. http://thewhiterabbitstl.com/catalog.php?page=1&category=36

Collective Saints and Sinners Party

I recently posted about setting up at the new co-op in downtown St. Louis called the Collective.  If you haven't read it yet, here it is.  We're really excited about being in a space with other creative people and can't wait to see it grow!

They have recently gotten their website going too.  Check it out!

http://www.collectivemx.com/

 

Since we are one of the vendors, we were invited to a Saints and Sinners costume party to celebrate the opening.  My mom and I were joined by 2 of our employees, Emily and Katie.  Here they are below.  Katie wore a really fun red flapper dress!

 

This is my mom in our space.  She had a mask to go with her furry vest but it was hard to keep on with her glasses.  Sorry for the dark pictures.  It was pretty dark in there because they were doing an awesome light show.

There were also cupcakes from The Cup, wine from Copia, and pizza from Pi.  Basically my personal heaven..

 

This is me with Brian Simpson, owner of East + West in Kirkwood.  He also has a space in the Collective.  He makes a pretty good zombie I think. 

I waited too long to plan my costume so I just had to settle for the tried and true witch hat.  It's basically the go-to costume for the person without a costume.

This is all of us in the space.  I wish the picture had turned out better!  Darnit! 

See the lights on the wall?  It says MX below because the Collective is a part of the Mercantile Exchange.  It's basically a series of buildings with shops and dining including Pi, the Blues Museum, the Collective and the new movie theater.  I think it's going to be so amazing for the downtown area. 

We had a great time at the party and it made us even more excited about the Collective.

 

The Collective opened today so you've gotta check it out!  Washington Avenue has really grown and I think you'll be surprised if you haven't been downtown in a while.  Let us know what you think when you visit and be sure to tell them The White Rabbit sent you!

Our setup for the Collective in downtown St. Louis

 

 

Hi guys, it's Lindsay here. We just finished setting up our space in the cool new Collective downtown and I wanted to share the pictures and info. It's a store full of local boutiques that was dreamed up by Nicole Benoist.  It's really a fun concept.  Here is a list of the boutiques that are in the Collective:
Adam Foster
Alternative Apparel
Beltshazzar
Byrd Style Lounge
Genovese Jewelers
Ivy Hill
Juxtapose
Kate Pollman
Oh Lolli Lolli
Q Boutique
Retta le Ritz
Roots
STL Style
twigs & MOSS
Wai Ming
White Rabbit
Women’s Closet Exchange
Phoenix Rising
City Sprouts

Located in the Mercantile Exchange district on Washington Avenue in St. Louis, it's a great spot to attract visitors, tourists, and local sports fans and residents.  I (Lindsay) recently moved downtown so I can walk to the space and make sure it looks good.  I'll be changing the displays frequently to keep it fresh.  Here's the awning:

Below is a picture of the space before anyone had moved in.

 

We checked in on Friday and this is what our space looked like.  It's just a blank wall with 2 partitions on either side.  We love a blank canvas!  What a fun challenge!

 

 

I have kind of taken over as the project manager for the space since I live a few blocks away and I have friends that live downtown.  I'm hoping that I can bring in goodies that some of the residents in the lofts will love.  We bought a little differently than we do for our main location because I think the customers will be a little different.  I think it will be tourists and young residents.  There is a lot more color in this display than our customers are used to from us!

 

 We've got candles, jewelry, these metal clocks, and lamps in the space.  Susan from Knollwood Lane made onesies that say "made in St. Louis" and totes with the Arch on them.

The french cow head is my favorite part.

These necklaces have vintage maps of St. Louis on them.  We sell them in our Brentwood store too and they have been a huge hit.  I displayed them in an old suitcase.

Here is my mom and I in our space.

After setting up, we walked next door to Pi and had lunch.  It was so fun and we cannot wait for you guys to see everything.  You can see pictures of other booths on their facebook page.  It opens in a few days so get ready!  Let us know what you think when you visit!