An incredible week!
An impressive debut at PG Live 09
were there launching our ranges of greeting cards and... we did good!
After weeks of creating, printing, designing, ordering and general hard work we launched at Progressive Greetings Live on Wednesday 27th May.
Our aim was to gauge opinion on our cards from industry buyers and seasoned professionals from the UK, Europe and Worldwide and we came away with orders, glowing comments and a golden ticket!
As newcomers to the industry it was important that we showed our unique abilities in an environment that wouldn't shy away from criticism of any kind. In fact, whenever we spoke to anyone new we made a point of explaining that we were at the show primarily to ask people if they liked what they saw, and we got very interesting feedback. Any thoughts that we would be ignored for the established companies were quickly dispelled and only five minutes after the opening of the doors we were in conversation with buyers from France and Switzerland and the flow of visitors continued until the final bell on Thursday afternoon.
So where do we stand in all of this? Well first of all, the overall consensus was very, very positive. We didn't have it all our way of course and there were buyers there who just weren't into the kind of work we produced. There were also buyers there who made some very constructive points that have helped us plan our future ranges. And there were those who just loved it all.
We were situated in the gallery area of the Design Centre meaning that we had only one side of the stand open to the corridor and flow of visitor traffic. In certain respects this was good as we intentionally designed the stand to 'draw' people into our area. This worked well and we lost count of just how many double takes visitors made, especially to our headlining Lov3d Up and Brilliant Birthdays ranges which were instant grabs. Visitors continued to stay and then became acquainted with our other ranges including the intelligent humor of Buzzwords and the beguiling engineering of those patient pups in the Wuff range.
We have taken orders - many from the top independent retailers we wanted to be noticed by - and it all ended beautifully with the presentation of J P Pozzi's golden ticket. The golden ticket (worth £150) was awarded to J P Pozzi at the Retailers Award (the Rita's), and David Robertson, co-owner decided to spend the cash on us. David, along with many other top retailers have been very complimentary about the cards and having the opinions of the people we really admire mean a lot to us.
Finally, we must also say a big thank you to Jackie, Warren, Tracey, Simon and all at the show for making us, and all other publishers incredibly welcome. The organisation of PG Live was second to none which made the new kids on the block's experience all the more enjoyable. Roll on PG Live 2010... we will be there!