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.