http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html

I report in at 184,000+ miles today but this lady has me beat by a great many miles!!

Nothing that interesting to report, but I did see these roosters outside of Prosperity, SC yesterday and it appears I am collecting these, so I am taking a shot for my friend, Cindy - these two are for you! One has some sort of pink bow on its back - I suppose that is to denote it is a chicken? :-)

Well, it's Saturday and I am glad to be home. Left early Monday morning headed for an appointment on the eastern shore of Maryland. I spent the week in Maryland and Delaware seeking out our customers and prospecting and picking up leads in areas where we have no customers. It was a great week in terms of seeing folks who have done business over the years, but have seen no salesperson in years and in some instances ever. I showed the line over and over again but no one was ordering - yet. They seemed to know what they like and what they will order when they can or must, but this week was not the week for orders, again. Finally, on Thursday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after being completely stood up by my first appointment (arghh) I got an order! The shop is the classic shell shop just like I remember from growing up in Florida. It really took me back to trips to Venice and Nokomis Florida and Vero Beach Florida - the old Florida of the early to mid 60's. If anything has a shell, a flamingo, a lobster or crab, a palm tree, about drinking or it being 5pm somewhere, is a boat motif, a nautical decor theme or has to do with hermit crabs it is in this store. I could imagine on a hot July day in this store, folks are packed in like sardines! Every possible Rehoboth Beach souvenir resides here too. The buyer was a very fun, upbeat lady and she bought many of our new coastal items and I came away with my only order of the week, but it was a decent one and more than I have come away with on other weeks with multiple orders. My last appointment of the week was in the very northern part of the eastern shore of Virginia, near the Maryland line. From the little information that I had about what she had ordered, I figured she was a dabbler, and not a serious Heritage customer. I was wrong. I met her at the store at 9am and when I walked in I was blown away by her Heritage display right in the front of the store! It was huge and it was beautiful. She had at one time been a showcase store and one of our better dealers. She shared with me some of her history and her love of our line. Her husband passed away with cancer and she was left with piles of bills that she is still working to pay down. Times have been hard and she has taken a job at Lowe's to keep her store open. She hired a seamstress to run the store and this lady makes window treatments and any other thing they can sell made from fabric. But she is a true optimist and fell in love with lots of our new products. We had a great 2 hour meeting and could have met longer, but she had to be to work at Lowe's by 11 am...

Thank you to the April 20th issue of The New Yorker for these two cartoons that seem to sum up the difference in my travel from last year to this. I turned over 178,000 miles yesterday on the way to a presentation to three people at a very large window coverings and custom drapery potential customer in Wilmington, NC about 2 hours 15 minutes from Raleigh. My intention was to spend the rest of the day following up on some other prospects in the area. While I was in my first presentation, a woman who had been playing phone tag with me for 2 weeks or so returned my call. She has much interest in our line and wanted a presentation. I am booked for the next three weeks and she was eager, so I GPS'd her location in a very small town called Windsor, the same as one of our beautiful lace collections - nearly 3 hours from Wilmington - a bit of a haul. I told her I could be there at 3:30pm and she gave me the address to meet her, at a friend's bed and breakfast. What a great place to do a presentation, outside on the very large, shady screened porch of a huge house built in the late 1700's! 75 degrees and filtered sunlight on our lace makes for a nice presentation. Turns out she knows our Colorado reps, Glenn and Melanie! Our products were not right for her western rustic Colorado store, but now, back in NC after 23 years, she is opening a new kind of store and loves our line, especially the traditional lace products. We spent about 2 hours looking at everyday, halloween and Christmas products. Her plan is to open her store by mid-summer and she even talked about ultimately opening other stores, perhaps in Edenton and maybe even the outer banks. I loved her bullish attitude towards business - she must be a go-getter as she and her husband are rennovating the house they just purchased built in the 1800's! So, 400 miles of driving to see two customers - sounds crazy, but I am learning that if you are going to go after it, you just have to go after it. I wrestle with how to make each day, each trip, as productive and efficient as possible, but in dealing with so many other people and their schedules and needs, sometimes I just have to check my senses as slam my car door and go for it the best I can.

Just wanted to add a quick post to finish off my week of travels into Northern Virginia, Maryland and back down into Virginia on Friday. I did see a good, longtime customer in Ruckersville, VA (near Charlottesburg) on Friday. She is one of our better customers and said she had not seen a rep in a long time, and was pleased to see all the new products. Her display was one of the most organized and best I think I have ever seen, especially when in part of an antique collectible with many vendors. She had transported from a closed Florida department store, literally tons of glass panels for cubed displays, neatly separating all of our products by sku with great labeling. Self service made very easy for the customer! She placed an order for new items, and said she would be ordering to re-stock very soon, since she had just arrived in VA after spending the winter in Florida. I went on to our large customer in Williamsburg to try to get a look and some specs on our new space in the all new linen building. As you can see from the photo, the space is still not close to ready - I am now told May - but I was able to take lots of photos and measurements and put my mind at ease... I can now make a plan (with the help of some folks at Heritage) for the new space. Whenever they are ready, hopefully I will be too!!

It is Friday morning in Charlottesville, VA and my first appointment isn't until 10:30am (at the customer's request) about 15 miles from here. This is a good customer, so am eager to see her shop. Wednesday, I decided to hit the inner harbor of Baltimore, because I remembered seeing lots of shops with crab motifs there, and since I was close by starting out in Laurel, MD, I headed there. It was pretty crowded for an early April day, but lots of kids are on Spring Break this week, with Easter coming up this weekend. I had to park pretty far away in a garage, but headed for the shops. What I found out, was that one company based in MA handles all of these shops that are not name brand chains! I went to each shop and got the same answer. They do some local buying but the company in MA handles lots of destination stores in tourist areas. This could be a possible lead for us to create products for destination stores, so I will follow up with my sales managers soon. I did get the name and number of the person that does some local buying and will follow up on that soon. I headed to see a prospect in a cool, funky Baltimore neighborhood called Hampden, who had been in our showroom and liked the wall art. None of the four owners were in the shop, but the fellow behind the counter seemed very interested and took my card and notes to follow up with the owners; the store was very cool and funky. I did see the large flamingo on the side of the building, so that was a fun plus to my trip to the neighborhood. I did stop in another shop with some crab kitchen items and got info on the owner and when to contact her as she was traveling. I also spent time in Cockeysville, MD at a customer in a dutch market, cold called a party store (owner not there) for halloween and crab items, and headed for Hagerstown to see two customers, one current and one inactive. The inactive customer took 2 hours looking at everything and taking notes, so that when she has money she will know what she wants to add. She even wants to get into window treatments this time around. After Hagerstown, I went over to Frederick to see a small but longtime customer that I knew from Oxford House Collection days and had not seen since 2000 at a show at Javits in NYC. She had a great, funky shop and I showed her things she wanted to see. That area of Maryland is beautiful nestled in the small foothill mountains. Apparently Camp David is fairly near Frederick, so I can see how a president could find that a great place to get away. After Frederick MD, I drove on to Charlottesville, VA where I will see more folks today here, on to Williamsburg to check out our new space, and then head home! It is Good Friday, so let's see what it holds for me today, beyond the meaning it has for Christians around the world.

This week finds me in Maryland. Yesterday I started in Fredericksburg, VA, making a call on a current customer with a great antique mall right on the main street. She took time to look at all the new things and wrote a small order. She, like so many others, wants to order more, but the dollars are tight. I drove on to Waldorf, MD and saw another customer who too, looked at all the new things and wrote a small order. The hope for this customer is to do a nice Heritage section in their furniture store, as the dollars and time allow. Today I spent in Maryland seeing one current customer with a neat eclectic shop in an old house - they too, wrote an order for all new products for the most part, including our new wall art. She had seen it in Atlanta in January and was really excited to order and try it. She ordered one each of all four pieces, so I hope it is a successful item for her. Two other customers who had given me appointments, now today were not able to meet with me so I spent a good bit of the day propsecting but I did come up a little dry with not many gift stores to be found. Tomorrow is another day though! The duck picture came from Soloman's Island on the coast. I saw these ducks in rain coats (and yes, it was raining on and off) facing these real ducks and it just made me smile! Shortly after I snapped the shot, the two real ducks came running to my car - i think they wanted food, or maybe a pair of sharp yellow rain slickers, who knows? I have driven past several dozen seafood places and crab shacks, with the image of choice being crabs and then maybe anchors and boats. Lenny's really cracked me up so I just had to snap a shot - I just am not sure what an evergreen tree has to do with seafood dinners! But the idea of beer on tap was mighty tempting, so after the shot, I just moved on down the road.

I have been quiet since the last post from Atlanta, but that is not to mean that I have not been busy! Several small NC trips (New Bern, Greenville, Mebane) have produced a couple of new customers, some revitalized existing customers and some potential new ones. The reason for my being local the last few weeks hinges on planning for a larger Virginia customer that needs major setup work in a new building but the construction is running behind. I blocked out one week for the setup at the customer's request, then that was moved to the next week. This effectively set back all my appointments for two weeks. Then last week early, they told me it still was not ready. It is now unknown as to when they want me to do the 2-3 day setup for our display. So, to fill the space that had been allocated for Virginia, I made smaller one to three day trips locally. This week, I headed down towards Ocean Isle Beach, NC for a couple of appointments with decorators and then on down to Northern SC to see a couple of existing customers. I found a new shop right on a main road between Ocean Isle and Sunset Beach run by two formerly retired ladies who are partners, friends since 2000. The day was windy and really rainy, so when I entered their shop, they asked, "What are you doing out on a day like today?" They spent two hours looking at our line and asking questions and wrote an order for mainly 'non-lace' products, such as Pellora linens (crab, lobster, pineapple), silks and embroidered linens. Really fun ladies, it was a great meeting - they have only been open since February, and said they had sold through half their inventory already! They said they just buy what they like and it is working - I think this is because they have a very unique product selection and their shop is very inviting - no collectibles or gifts 'lines' per se, just home decor for inside and outside the home. One of them bragged that they had the nicest bathroom (they had joked that they offer the nicest bathroom to customers who enter the shop) - which I did check out before leaving and it is in fact, very nice! I spent the next day visiting existing customers in Loris and Conway, SC - both towns were in full bloom with azaleas, dogwoods and wisteria everywhere. Reminded me of Tallahassee in springtime. In Conway, while meeting with the three ladies who run the curtain store (a mother, a daughter and a niece), they started talking about a fund raiser that day where they were serving 'orrycounty chickenbog', pronouced, 'chickinbog' as all one word. After seeing my confusion in trying to follow their conversation they explained to me that Chicken Bog in Horry County (pronounced /ˈɔəriː/ ORR-EEE) is something everybody makes and it is really good and filling. Basically, you boil one whole chicken, save the broth and remove chicken and debone it. Put the chicken back in with the broth, add half as much rice as you have broth (if need be, add more broth), add sausage (hot or regular, they said they use kielbasa) and maybe an onion (personal preference) and bring to a boil. After it reaches a boil put a lid on it and cook for 30 minutes or so. I was cautioned that one must not peek during the cooking or the chicken bog will be mushy. The younger gal said she makes a cheater version and buys a roasted chicken at Costco and uses canned broth, but she said it is almost as good as from scratch. You learn a little something new at every appointment! One of the prospects in Ocean Isle Beach, NC that I had an appointment with had asked me to circle back Friday afternoon on my way back from SC to make a full presentation, and I even confirmed this by phone from Conway. I arrived about 3:15pm and much to my chagrin after waiting for 15-20 minutes, the partner who really needed to be there was tied up again and could not meet (this happened Thursday midday too). I reviewed a few more things with the gal at the front counter and told them to call me when they were ready to look at products, or that I would call the next time I was in the area. Needless to say, I was a bit miffed as I headed out to return home again. No more than five or six miles down the road, I noticed my air conditioning was not cooling. When I looked at the temperature gauge on my car it was on hot! Shortly thereafter, I noticed smoke coming from under my hood and pulled over. (...here is where I have to admit that I had, for over a week noticed some small amount of steam or smoke coming from my hood when I started the car up and a bit of a strange smell, but I assumed it was a little oil burning off from my seeping gasket....wrong!). By this point, it was getting into late afternoon. I went to 'points of interest' on my GPS and looked for auto repair places that were close by. I settled on Don's Automotive about 2 miles from where I was. I called and spoke with Don and explained my problem. He said to try to get to him, but if I boiled over or ran into a problem, they could come and bring me water or whatever so I could try and get to his shop. I ran the heat on high and had to pull over three times to cool my engine back down but I made it the two miles to Don's shop. By this point it was about 4:30 pm, on a Friday afternoon - eeek. I wasn't sure that I would make it home for the weekend at this point. When Don raised my hood, he was shocked - not that my radiator hose had blown, but that it was the original hose! (here is where I remind you that my car is nearly 13 years old and has over 176,000 miles on it!! - and here is where I boiled over thinking that with all the major required maintenance I have paid for over the years, no one saw fit to replace this hose?!?!). At any rate, Don said he thought it was just the hose that needed replacing but they would make sure. A young fellow named Jimmy took the hose off and jumped in his sports car and zoomed off to the auto parts store to try to find a suitable replacement, since they had nothing to match my 13-year-old Subaru hose at the shop. About 10-15 minutes later he returned with one that he could cut down a bit. Don walked by and told him to go ahead and replace the clamps too. Shortly, I had a new hose on my old paint. Jimmy added a ton of anti-freeze back into the radiator and turned the car back on. She purred like a kitten and the gauge was comfortably back in the middle where it had been for 13 years. Don rang me up, $75 and an hour's time, and I was back on my way home again! Now here is where the whole day started to make a little sense to me. Had the last appointment been available for my presentation as I had hoped, it would have possibly been 5:30 or 6pm when I started to head for home. At that point on a Friday I would more than likely not been able to get an auto shop to help me. And, I had planned to go home a more interesting back route through the country; had my hose not blown early on, I would have been out in the boondocks on a Friday evening and who knows where I would be right now or what I would have been dealing with. Earlier in the week I had told a rep that the Lord is riding with me, and today, I have proof!

Sitting here at the Atlanta Gift Show on a Sunday morning I wanted to take a minute and reflect a bit upon the latter part of my week. Thursday (after living through my harrowing night in Greenwood, SC) I headed to check on existing customers and found one nearby (the buyer had already told me she couldn't see me that day but to check with her in late April, since she couldn't buy now) and wanted to see what the nature of the store was. It was a huge, eclectic mix of antiques, gifts, kitchen and a 'wine cellar' room (not actually a cellar); it also appeared to be the local gathering place for the retired fellows around Greenwood to find fresh coffee - not really our demographic, but can hope their wives also frequent the store! I went on to Abbeville, where I found a 'customer' to be a house in a very rural area - my guess was they made some personal purchases at a gift show at one time or another. I did find another potential new customer in downtown Abbeville who hopes to be able to purchase by the end of April, before their street festival the first week of May. I will check back in late April with her. I then headed towards Batesburg to see a customer who had also told me that she would not be available, but I wanted to get a read on the store where I saw several retired items on an old wooden Heritage display, but they had Gala valances hanging in their windows across the front of the store and they looked great - gives me thoughts for my plan of attack at a later date! The woman working the store said their business was decent and they were holding their own, so I want to see them again in late April and make some suggestions for a good update to the products. Moving on to Lexington to see an inactive customer, I saw a great barn type building general store and went inside to meet the owner who told me things are tough for them right now and to check back . . . in September. They really did have inventory stacked to the rafters and we would be a great match, but not until they move some products out! I made it to our inactive Bed & Breakfast and restaurant in Lexington (the two pictures are of this place with Heritage Lace in every window) and unfortunately I JUST missed the impressive Southern Lunch Buffet (now this should make your mouth water as I list the menu, although I feel certain they don't serve all of this every day, but maybe they do...): fried chicken, pork chops, baked ham, pot roast with carrots and potatoes, chicken and dumplings, meat loaf, early peas, lima beans, green beans with new potatoes, mac n cheese, cabbage, corn, fried green tomatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, creamed potatoes & gravy, rice, coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad, corn salad, southern bread salad, fruit salad, corn muffins, biscuits and a dessert selection....hungry?? Price is $8.95 per person. The owner was very gracious as he was counting large stacks of bills, so I believe the lunch crowd is coming in. He just recently started serving lunch again and said it is really picking up. Unfortunately, the buffet is where the gift shop used to be, so we have lost our real estate. He did invite me to come back, skip breakfast, enjoy the buffet and after lunch he would let me make a presentation. He loves our window treatments, and says he does pull a catalog out to order if anyone asks. He loves the quality and the price; I just have to find a spot to get products into that house somewhere! I called on a customer in Irmo, who is in a 150 year old house with a beautiful shop. She only does a bit of business with us, but isn't really interested right now in 'growing her business' as her main focus is the upcoming construction to add on to her shop! Wow, I will check back after construction is complete and try to claim some additional space for our line. On to West Columbia to see a couple more inactive customers; one was a small house (personal order again more than likely) and the other was a gift shop / hair salon - the owner was not in, as she was taking her elderly mother to the doctor. I asked when I could check back and see the owner and was told that Mondays and Tuesdays were good, but the rest of the week she 'does hair' . . . I have to admit when I got to my car I did have a good chuckle over that one. Friday I saw a couple potential window coverings prospects, one in Columbia where I will need to check back because I will need to present to all three folks and the second in Aiken who was a really nice man who loved the product. His wife recently passed away quickly with a brain tumor but his business was really booming after a few months of being closed with a combination of grieving and Walgreen's construction next door. He said now that Walgreen's is open, the additional traffic was giving him even more exposure and business. He had an award on the wall for 2008 Aiken's best window designs. He told me to see him again in late April when he hopes to purchase the launch kit and the portable countertop display, but first he had to hire more help! He is taking three extra days at Easter to hike another portion of the Appalachian Trail - he is 72 and his goal at 75 is to take several months and do the whole thing! I have a feeling he will also sell some Provinaire. It was an interesting week, lots of prospects, but not one order - I think that will come though.

Tonight another not so savory hotel on the road in Greenwood, SC. This was supposed to be a Quality Inn (chain brand reliably consistent usually) but when I arrived it was called the 'Economy Inn' with a no brand sign and yes, soap from India, again. What is the deal with that? My door had a brand new, shiney bolt on the inside, you know the kind that swings a U-shaped thing over a knob to keep folks out when you open the door after hearing 'land shark' or 'candygram' - new bolt made sense when I looked at the outside of the door, with obvious scarring and paint gone from some wild person with a screwdriver going at the poor, unfortunate lock that was removed to be replaced by the new shiney one. I just had to wonder if it was an altercation between roommates, or perhaps they had to get in here to remove a body? I am just kidding, but you know dealing with the general public on the road is a real experience. The creamer shot is just a part of my usual unsavory hotel rant that I go through when the room is not the best - I love it: 'Non Dairy Creamer' but in bold print at the bottom: Contains: Milk. It did give me a quite a chuckle. Now, let me jam every spare chair against this door and get to bed :-))

This week sees me in the upstate of South Carolina as I work my way down to the gift show in Atlanta this weekend. Yesterday I had an appointment with a small customer in Chester, SC and also went over to Lancaster to prospect some. Amazingly, Lancaster did not appear to have any gift stores or window coverings dealers. All I could find were strip centers consisting mainly of payday advance type companies, E-Z financing places, pawn shops and lots of insurance providers of all kinds along with fast food restaurants a plenty and of course, Wal Mart. Lancaster is decent size, but seemed very depressed. This would be easy to explain if you take into account the massive, empty textile mills everywhere, with weeds growing, buildings falling into ruin and all for sale. I saw two huge Springs Industries mills shuttered, a huge F. Schumacher mill for sale or lease and several other textile related places shuttered. It really hits home when you see these buildings vacant. I made my way back up to Greenville for the night. Today I prospected all over Greenville and had a good appointment with a potential for window treatments and several possible follow up presentations the next time I am in the area - many times the buyer or owner is not there when you need them to be. I also went over to Easley to see an inactive customer who had not purchased since 2005. Very nice store and I will try to meet the owner for a full presentation when I am in the area again in late April. Tonight I am in the Greenwood area making my way down towards Columbia and on over to the Aiken area. I will cover whatever I can before I head to Atlanta on Friday afternoon for the show.

The best laid plans.... well for the week of March 2, I had planned a nice full week trip going to Fredericksburg, VA north into Maryland, to see as many of our existing customers as possible. I had a pretty good docket of appointments, and with a trip that far away, needed my full 5 days to get there, get 'er done and then get back home by late on Friday night. Then came Sunday night and in Raleigh about 3" of snow, but in Northern VA into MD, much much more snow. On Monday, I couldn't even reach anyone by phone and even by Tuesday, a couple of MD customers said the roads were rough. I regrouped and went into major planning mode to cover the next month and laid out my future trips. I went into the Mill on Wednesday which was a good and productive day, working on a few projects. Thursday I planned for my SC trip next week as I work my way down to the Atlanta Gift Show March 14-16. Friday was a good day as I left early to see the bakery I missed earlier in New Bern and then to prospect in Kinston and Goldsboro, NC. The bakery/restaurant is going to only do the wall hangings now as their space is limited, but from the looks of the dining room at 10:20 am they are doing a booming breakfast business. The buyer I worked with told me she is really pleased with the look of the new wall hangings. She plans to order in several styles and loves now that our pack size is 2, giving her an opportunity to order and try more looks. I asked her for direction as to who in New Bern might try our table and window lace and linens and she really couldn't suggest anyone. On the way in I had seen a Tea Room/Restaurant, so headed back that way to check it out. There was lace in the windows, on the tables, on the shelves and it was all low quality and miss-matched - I saw an opportunity there for sure! The owner was not in but was expected around noon, so I went around to see if there were other opportunities in New Bern, where by the way, Bike Week is moving from Myrtle Beach this May; I found a party store that I showed halloween too, a fabric store where the owner was not in, and then circled back. The owner still was not in and the lunch crowd appeared about to descend, so I took my catalog out to get the wait staff interested so they could share my thoughts with the owner. They loved what they saw and promised to pass the catalog and my card along to the owner. I thanked them, and let them get back to work. Onward to Kinston where I found a great gift, gourmet and home decor store with an unusual concept, it was connected to a huge independent sporting store for hunting and fishing and the parking lot was full. The buyer was at lunch so I left my card and told her I would be back in about thirty minutes. I ate my yogurt and banana in the car and went back again. I met the buyer and she seemed interested as I told her about Heritage, our USA made story and flipped through to show her the diverse looks. I shared that a huge gourmet store in Chapel Hill was putting some products in and showed her what they had liked. She asked for a catalog and for me to follow up with her again to make a presentation - she had a shipment of furniture that had just come in and needed to attend to that. I moved on towards Goldsboro, where I had seen a curtain store in a strip center right on the US highway. I stopped in and shared our story with the owner and she loved what she saw, only problem was she had a customer appointment in a couple minutes and could not take time for a presentation, but begged that I make an appointment and come back when she could really take the time to look at everything. I told her I would come back. I went on into Goldsboro where I checked out an interior decorator's home decor store, but there was so much stuff piled in there they couldn't possibly have displayed another thing. I thought maybe Provinaire, but they turned out to be a dedicated Hunter Douglas dealer. I found another curtain store where the buyer there was going through some tough times personally and we talked for a good long while about many things before she let me dig into my sample bag and show her our products. The look in the store was very youthful and so her interest was only in a few of our window treatments, and possibly the pendant lighting - most products in her store were pretty low priced items from China so she was a bit resistent to our price points. I explained our quality to her and answered any questions. We may do some business there later, with follow up but not today. It was getting late, so I started to head back to Raleigh. But wait, a phone message, so I checked and it was the owner of the tea house very interested in the concept of using our lace and selling it too. We talked for a long time and I agreed to get back down to make a full presentation in the next few weeks. Yea! Looks like I need to make a trip back down for three follow-up presentations after Atlanta. And today, a catalog in Virginia emailed me to say they are putting two collections in the Fall catalog. So some weeks don't go as you planned, but even then some good things happen!

Just a few shots from my day - the coastal plain, pancake flat, the water everywhere and long, long bridges and the Carolina blue sky!

Okay, I know this may sound crazy but I stayed in not so savory a place last night in Elizabeth City, NC and the room did not have a coffee maker - that is a make it or break it thing for me - the coffee maker is a room essential. I can put up with the strangly lumpy crumbled foam pillow if I have to, the hard as a rock bed, the low lighting, but no coffee maker is a deal breaker - I won't be booking the Traveler's Inn again that's for sure. But one thing I found really strange is the soap.....a brand in shiny wrapper, and note the back, Made in India! How much cheaper can soap be because it comes from India? Very curious indeed. What would Proctor & Gamble think?

This week so far has taken me on a good tour to see customers in the coastal region of North Carolina. First, on the way towards the coast, I saw a unique customer in a very small town of Grifton - a restaurant and home and garden store - a neat place where you can get almost anything you need and a meal to boot. They have recently added a tea room and some additional business with that. Our lace (along with other home furnishings items) has been moved around the store several times and is now in an admittedly not great place in the far part of the store, up some stairs. The owner's wife is going to move the lace over by the tea room and restaurant where it will be in a traffic pattern and get more attention. Her husband has been going through some pretty serious health issues and business has also been tough for them, so she really has her hands full. She enjoyed seeing all the new products and will be ordering when business is a little better - hopefully when garden season arrives. I found two new customers in Atlantic Beach and in Cedar Point, both very happy to have our line to supplement their current offerings. I went to see a customer in New Bern but arrived 30 minutes too late - they are a bakery/restaurant and have our lace at the cash register area in the front of the store. We had only agreed to meet that afternoon and exact time was not discussed. The restaurant closes at 3pm and I got there at 5 minutes past 3 because of two long running appointments in the morning. I did see the owner and also called his wife to apologize for being late. I asked for her 'ideal time' and she said 10:30am so I told her I would make a day soon when we could meet at that time - she sounded appreciative. I got the photo of the sailboats right at the end of the main street shopping district in New Bern. I did some prospecting in Washington and Edenton, but didn't come up with anything concrete - but a couple of neat photos of the sunset and the cypress knees under the trees in Edenton. I did make a Provinaire appointment back in Washington on my way back south which was today and went pretty well. I made it to a good customer in Duck who is struggling but opens her store in March and hopes to make it through the year. She loves our products and intends to keep doing a good job with them. I went by a customer in Nags Head whose store is closed yet, but it is good to get the visual and location down for later times. It is really hard to plan to see all the customers and allow time for prospecting too. I am having a little trouble finding that groove but hopefully I will find what works as I do this more. I do know now there there is lots of remote wilderness in the NC coastal plain!

This week, I spent three good days on the road in southeastern Virginia. My goal was to seek out all existing accounts that I could reach and see, and prospect when possible. My first appointment in Suffolk was with a wonderful lady who carries our line on her website. She has a business making really nice sweatshirts and t's and added Heritage to her website a bit over a year ago and is doing some really good business with our line. She is a sharp cookie and really focuses on customer service. Unlike most customers I see, she was already thoroughly aquainted with our new products! I was impressed with her and the way she is growing her business. We had a great visit and she appreciated seeing all the products up close. I think she will continue to do well with the line because she appears to work hard and give her best to all her endeavors, be it her own business, selling our line or her farm market stand in warmer weather. I moved on and saw other customers that day heading for Virginia Beach to check out some existing customers and a potential new customer who expressed interest in Atlanta. Where one of our customers had been was a giant new shopping center, so that combined with a disconnected phone tells me that customer is gone. I found four customers this week who are no longer in business, but I felt compelled to see that for myself. I did have good appointments this week with a few customers who want to get into our window treatments in a bigger way. That is exciting to me because window treatments can be great business for our Heritage dealers. There are no comparable products on the market and window treatments can be a bigger ticket sale for both Heritage and the retailer. I have included a little slideshow with a few images from the week. Other than business things, one thing I have learned is that when a motel says they have high speed wireless, that is not always the case. Someone there has it, but not always you! I am learning to not get to riled over that and just do the best I can. It is hard though, because missing a day of checking email can lead to a long night of the next night when the wireless actually works. I also have gotten behind on my blog as a result, but that is how the cookie crumbles... I do want to mention the best thing I have found to help with sleeping in less than ideal conditions (noise in halls, outside or planes taking off when you are at the airport motel) - I have an iPod iTouch and small speakers and there is a fantastic app that you can get for I think $0.99 called 'White Noise'. It gives you many choices of noises you can play and I have found the 'brown noise' turned up a bit to be the best cover for all ambient noise when trying to sleep on the road. Cudos to the application and Apple!! It has greatly enhanced my ability to catch zzz's when traveling. And cudos to Subway for the $5 foot long sub!! When selling on a budget I like finding all food groups in one inexpensive meal!! Next week, the NC and SC coast!! More later.

First today, I need to update my blog for last week's travels. I spent a few days last week seeing some North Carolina customers in the Winston-Salem area and south to Kannapolis, with some prospecting in Greensboro, which I need to continue at some point. I did have a great meeting with a custom curtain/home decor store, that I hope will evolve into more business, although sometimes hard to tell. Some customers get very excited 'in the moment' of a presentation and then as time goes on, we get lost in the shuffle. The challenge will be to follow up and contact them again, as I monitor what they are ordering (or not, as the case may be). I had always passed the sign for 'Historic Spencer Shops' on I-85 going south towards Kannapolis, and now being a salesperson, decided to stop in and see who I might interest in the line. Unfortunately, Spencer was becoming a ghost town much as Shennandoah, VA that I passed through a week earlier. There were signs however, of a growing artist presence on one historic block, so perhaps revitalization will come in that way, creating interest and traffic, and again independent retailers. I have added a three photo slideshow for you to see a little of what I saw in Spencer that day.

Just a quick note to any of you post-readers (and I thank you!) - if you want to see any photo larger, you can double click on it and get a large photo to view. Then just hit your arrow to go back to the blog. Sometimes the small photo size just doesn't show you very much.

Well, I never had a chance to do the final post for my week in Virginia. I finished the week with a call on a customer with an Amish furniture store in Farmville, VA. They really are into the traditional lace and do a good job with it. The buyer is willing to try a couple of our new US Made linens that are reversible to add to her lace assortment - I hope they are successful for her. I stopped into a local bakery to get a coffee for my trip through southern Virginia and on home and low and behold was a neat glass case full of classic lunchboxes where I found a lunchbox just like my first grade barn lunchbox. Wonder if that could be the one I had? I wanted to take US 15 through the backcountry and do a little prospecting on the way home. I found a nice herd of Bison in Red Oak, VA contentedly grazing and also an old general merchandise store, long closed down, with a 'Vendors Wanted' sign in the front - I am pretty sure this isn't a good match for us . . . I did stop in Clarksville, VA and spoke for a long while with a woman in a design and home decor store who may be interested in both our Heritage and Provinaire lines. I will have to go back for a presentation when her husband is in the store too. Overall it was a good week last week for learning, laying groundwork, starting relationships, finding potential new accounts and I even wrote a few orders. I am hopeful as the weather warms, store-keeper's wallets will thaw and they will have money to spend. Right now, more want to keep the money there, safe, or don't have any in the first place. But there is hope with these folks, that things will get better and people will once again shop. Buy local!!

Hello again, from the road. This I took today while driving (don't tell the law) heading down the road towards Roanoke, Virginia. It is always nice and uplifting to see a great sunset. Yesterday I had a great meeting in Madison, Virginia with Plow & Hearth catalog. The buyer is a very personable, knowledgeable guy and was very interested in many of our products - YEA! He wrote me an email during the day to say thanks for a great meeting - always nice to get when you finally finish the day and start your after hours second job of checking emails in the hotel to make sure all the other stuff you are responsible for is also getting done. After the Plow & Hearth meeting, I headed over the mountains into the Shenandoah Valley to see some other small customers and do a little cold calling and prospecting. I hit the towns of Elkton and New Market. On the way to New Market, I drove through the historic town of Shenandoah, with beautiful wooden signs pointing me to the historic railroad district. I turned left and headed there and running parallel to the tracks were beautiful historic store fronts with large front windows - the only disturbing thing was that they all were empty with 'For Rent' signs in the windows. It was downright eerie - you could almost hear the sounds of people roaming the streets, gravel crunching under their feet, but no one was anywhere to be seen. An interesting thing that happened to me yesterday too, was that on three different occasions, three different hawks came out of the trees (or maybe one hawk followed me all day??) and for a short moment appeared to be racing my Subaru, right above my windshield. Funny thing is they didn't even appear to be trying that hard - could it be that they were making light of my car? Or were they maybe saying, you can do it, all you have to do is keep flying? I may never know, but it was a wonderous yet brief sight that added an extra touch of joy to my day. My main activity today was seeing one of our better stores, a lace 'Gallery' store (actually two stores in close proximity) where I spent 5 hours with the owner, showing product, talking about updating the product and displays, and hearing her angst over the current economic situation and downturn in business. I know she speaks the truth, because in the five hour period there was but one customer who purchased one runner - a $34 sale for the day. That hurts. She is very excited about our new products and will be bringing them in - when she has some money in the coffers. I told her I believe in the independent retailer and what they offer the public - product differentiation and customer service, value and quality. She agreed, but kept asking 'when will people start spending again?' I told her that I believe at some point the pent up demand will break the dam and people will spend. She liked that.

Well, it is groundhog day and also the first 'official' day of my road repping career. So, after much planning and setting of appointments, I headed for Warrenton in north central Virginia. I had booked an early afternoon visit with one of our current customers who has grown her business over the last couple of years. My hope is that she can grow it even further. We had a good meeting with me showing the new products from January 2008 through January 2009, and she taking copious notes. I really wanted to leave there with an order in hand, but that was not to happen. She is going to put something together and fax it to me - later. After that appointment, I did some prospecting coming upon a garden center/gift shop with the cool barn wall of windows and doors - so inviting I had to take a peek. Being the off season, the owner/buyer was not in, so I left a card and some info and kept on going (of course, after jotting down the name and address of the store for later). I paid a call on another very small customer, but the buyer again was not in, but I did speak with the manager (who appears to have some influence) and suggested some products to try making some notes in a catalog to leave with her. I went on to Culpeper, VA, a town of special significance, since my mom spent some of her early teen years growing up on a dairy farm there. The church you see pictured, is Saint Stephen's Episcopal Church and it is significant because my mother played the organ there - and not always such holy music - she was caught playing the boogie woogie on the big organ once!! It was close to 5pm when I was roaming around the main downtown area, but I was able to make note of a few shops to follow up with at a later time. The Frost Cafe caught my eye - I thought I saw Edward Hopper sitting in the window. And fitting is the name, as a snow storm is on the way tonight. Tomorrow should be an interesting day, trying to keep appointments with customers in the foothills and mountains with ice and snow on the ground! Wish me luck!

Just wanted to add a picture today of all the great folks that make up every facet of Heritage Lace in Pella, Iowa. This picture was taken last fall in celebration of our 25th anniversary. A greater group of folks couldn't be found anywhere! Just a note, our road selling starts on February 1, so I am spending time tying up loose product development ends and studying up on my accounts to prepare to hit the road. I have laid all current accounts out on maps so I can visualize where the accounts actually are. I used a color-coded system indicating the level of sales they have achieved, so I can find A, B and C accounts on the map. I am learning quite a bit about geography and where our customers physically are. This has been a great exercise and should prove very helpful in breaking down the territory to attempt to cover all the accounts and discover areas where we have no retailers. We will see!

2009 – a year of sales adventure, and change. That is how this year will be, good or bad – it will be an adventure and a year of trying my hand at something completely different. I work for Heritage Lace, a truly great family owned business. Imagine the first week of December that you are in product development and finalizing your new January product introduction. There is some looking ahead and anticipation of where product development will go in the next year, based on the reception of the beautiful new catalog and products. Halloween intros, along with harvest and Christmas are being put to bed, as photography for sales materials commences. There is a meeting the first week of December and now you find out that you are going to be a road rep for the coming year, traveling a 5-state area, and selling the line that you just helped develop for the last couple of years. Driving your own car and going from independent retailer to independent retailer, selling the things you so passionately worked to develop with two awesome designers. It honestly, comes as a huge shock, because along with the job change, come pretty huge financial changes in compensation….it will be through the aggressive selling of this line that you believe in, that you will be financially compensated. Mixed emotions, yes.

I work for a textile company and distributor, Heritage Lace, still manufacturing here in the USA. Between our mill in Oxford, North Carolina and our manufacturing, customer service, product development and design, and marketing in Pella, Iowa, we work to keep nearly 200 people employed, in an industry that has been ravaged over the last 15 years by an ever-increasing mountain of textile imports. Fully 95% of our product line is made in the US, and this year for the first time, we have linens that are 100% US made to coordinate with our US made laces and products from our own mill. By adding these US linens to our line, we have added to the numbers of US textile workers that our line hopes to help support.

The why of my job change has to do with the fact that in today’s economic climate, a company such as Heritage Lace needs increased sales, plain and simple. We have always relied on a tremendous network of independent sales representative to carry our line in their respective territories to independent retailers. Some of our sales representatives have been with us from nearly the beginning, 25 years ago - we continue to work with some of the best in the industry. Believe me, I am seeking advice from these kind and experienced folks! Talk about putting your money where your mouth is, I am now going to go out and try to do what I have admired that they do every day – they hit the road and sell, sell, sell.

The independent retailers, to whom we sell, have pressures put upon them by the ever-increasing number of big box stores over the last 15 to 20 years; these box stores with homogenized product offerings and lack luster choices, overbuilt all to satisfy our need for disposable, low-priced goods. These independent retailers we work with, offer the US buying public differentiation, unique products and a chance to ‘buy local’ keeping the dollars they spend in their own communities. My hope is that there will be a rise in independents as our economy adjusts. I hope that people will spend their money with more thought, on products with value that they will keep and cherish. Naïve, perhaps, but it is what I hope for and believe. And with our US made products, I hope I can find folks that still care that things are made here by our citizens.

With the gift of faith, I am planning to go out and do my best, and join the ranks of our best independent reps, to see what I can do for my company in the field. This blog will be a creative outlet for me to share my year on the road. My Subaru, with 170,000 miles and counting, will hopefully carry me to new and interesting places, where hopefully, I will connect with independent retailers and build relationships and business from South Carolina to Delaware and every point in between. Check back and see what I am up to! Thanks for reading, Barb