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!