Clump-o-Lump Debut
Each year in January, a handful of Knock Knockers head to New York for the New York International Gift Fair (where we have a booth) to introduce and sell our new Spring products to retailers. The show serves as one of our first opportunities to gauge how our new product may fair in the marketplace. It is always an event full of anticipation and hope. This year, there was even more excitement than usual in the air for Knock Knockers, due to the launch of our super snuggable, zip-and-match Clump-o-Lumps. These adorable plush creatures let kids (and grown-ups) create imaginative new friends by unzipping heads, torsos, and rumps and then zipping them together again in different combinations.
It was most gratifying to watch customers approach the Clump-o-Lumps, touch them, squeeze them, unzip them, and then smile. Everyone seemed to have a favorite. One mom liked Bee-o the Bee because her term of endearment for her daughter is, “My sweet bee.” Another person liked Shark-o the Shark because he looks so “goofy.” My current personal favorite is Frog-o the Frog because its tongue makes me laugh.
Each night when the show was over for the day, we packed our Clump-o-Lump friends into giant luggage for safekeeping over night. One night we nearly packed Carolyn, our VP of Sales, into the bag with the Clump-o-Lumps:
And now for something completely different.
Mind the Gap
The New York International Gift Show takes place at the Javits Center. It is a place many of us have been to multiple times and as result we have developed a number of pet peeves about the place.
Several of us particularly love to complain about the “gap” in the bathroom stall. When you are in a stall with the door closed there is a disconcertingly large gap between the door and stall wall. It is more than a peek’s worth of gap too and many of us try to cover it up with jackets, toilet paper, etc. So if you are attending an event at the Javits, our advice is, “Mind the gap.”