MARIAB fair follow-up (finally)

This is going to be short and sweet...as it has taken me too long to get it out as it is. It was, as my previous posts probably make clear, a great show for us. We had strong sales and strong buying and...perhaps best of all...strong stickiness. We had great conversations, what I hope will turn out to be a great interview with a trade journal and, well, just a great time. Enough "greats".

Eli was a lot of fun and remarkably well behaved for a 6 year old boy spending about 10 to 11 hours a day at a book fair. Joyce and Ken (and the rest of their crew) were lovely to and with him. He was very pleased with his bow tie, though was as disappointed as I that it was a clip-on (J. Crew's site did not indicate it and I assumed, wrongly, that the absence of the term meant it was "real"). He is getting a real one for his next show. He is overly excited about this. I am certain it will embarrass him later in life.

The promoter did, I think, a great job getting bodies in the door. The site was much better than last year...attractive and centrally located. $10/day is a genuine treat the week after a NY fair (and $45/day). The 7-11 next door even had cherry in the Slurpee machine (I know, embarrassing, a geeky but wildly addictive remnant of my tainted youth).

I was very pleased with the volume of humans in the aisle and in the booth. Admittedly, we were on the central aisle and I am not certain how steady the traffic was on the other three rows on the book side. We definitely did have a fair number of people really "there" for antiques stop by and look...and geared our front display case specifically to draw people in...it seemed to work.

In the end, it reaffirmed my belief that these kinds of hybrid shows are very good for us (Baltimore is another great example). I like any fair that draws in good crowds...the more the merrier. For these smaller and regional fairs, drawing in larger crowds seems like a good idea for all involved. I think it is great that MARIAB was willing to give this format a try...while it has only been two years now, it seems to me to have been a great decision.