The Clothes Show 2009 - we got there in the end!

Well The Clothes Show is all over for another year! This was only our second time of showing at the event and we kind of knew what to expect, but with a mammoth few weeks of work leading up to the show, things didn't go quite as smoothly as planned...

With our massive wholesale order being collected the day before going to The Clothes Show, some of our preparation time was stolen. This had a complete knock-on effect, we were still sewing, tagging and boxing when we should have set off. This meant we set off at 3.30pm instead of 1.30pm and got stuck in no less than 4 traffic jams (eek!). A journey to Birmingham which should only have taken 2 hours max took 4 1/2 hours. And that wasn't the end of the drama.....

We arrived at the NEC at 8pm & we only had 2 hours to set up, but we were so late they'd closed all the main gates so it took us another 20 minutes of driving around in circles to get parked up in the right loading bay. We pulled up thought "right we can just about do this" and then tried to get the van open to get the stock out - massive fail! The hired van suddenly had a complete melt-down and the central locking failed - sealing our stock in the van with no way to get it out. After 10 minutes of trying, getting other people to try and failing we had to call Ford Assistance - who said they would be there anytime in the next hour and a half!

Well having resigned ourselves to complete failure we entertained ourselves in the cabin of the van, making swingers and drinking coffee provided by NEC security guards who took pity on us. After many frantic phone calls with Ford Assistance, we got a text about 9.50pm saying they were on their way and as I was pacing about thought "i'll just give it another go...." - opened first time! So when the mechanic arrived he found two frantic girlies trying to hurl as much out of the van as possible. I stole a trolley, got the mechanic to help unload the cabin and raced through the halls so fast I gave myself an asthma attack. After much sympathy from the security guards they allowed us "just one more trip" after time and by 10.15 we'd managed to unload most of the stuff into the stand but we didn't have time to set anything up - we had to get up super early in the morning to do that.

And so began the pattern of the Clothes Show 2009. 6.30am calypso alarm calls, a day filled with moving, packing, re-stocking, selling chatting and photgraphing. Finishing the show at 6.30pm, we re-stocked, walked to the car park, called in at Sainsbury's, had tea somewhere and watched a DVD whilst finishing off some elephant bags (Jess) jewellery (me) and pricing and swingers (both of us). By the time we'd managed to get everything done it was suddenly 2am (we're both night owls) so then it was a few hours sleep before beginning it all over again.

We had a lovely visit from Jess' best friend Amy who has recently got a role in Hollyoakes. Amy bless her was thrown into our chaos and helped us out as best she could. She's been in Hollyoakes a few months now and was recognised by loads of people - at one point she was even mobbed by fans asking for autographs!

Even with another person to help us out a bit, didn't stop us from having more drama. We sold out of sweatshirts over the weekend and realised we'd forgotton a box of sake stock so we had to meet Gordon halfway up the motorway. Of course nothing went smoothly so after missing each other we both had to go well out of our way - we even missed our exit and ended halfway to London! We eventually got back to the travelodge at midnight armed with freshly printed sweatshirts and a sewing machine I was sewing necks and labels till 2am.

So overall it was a very stressful, tiring event. And this year we didn't have great sales to back it up. It's such an expensive event and when you factor in all the costs we didn't make a lot of profit - considerably less than last year. I think there were a few reasons for this, partly because we were so busy beforehand we didn't have time to get the stock right. I spent a lot of time sewing dresses as last year this is what I sold most of but this year hardly sold any. I think we probably had too much stock for our tiny stall and could have been more simply laid out. But I think the other factors we're more to do with the event - there were heaps of wholesaler type stalls all selling stuff very cheaply, we just couldn't compete on price although the extra box of sale stuff came in very handy you've got to sell a lot at £5 to make the same money.

There was no real disctinction between these stalls and the small independent brands - it was very confusing especially as the show was a lot quieter with less stalls. There was also less visitors, and there was a lack of ambience except for the very busy times because of this.

After speaking to some of the other traders I feel quite lucky to have come away with a profit, however small, some of the other stalls have traded for many years and they said it was one of the toughest shows they'd been to (and they didn't have the drama we did!) Everyone is quick to jump on the Credit Crunch bandwagon but I think only part of this is due to the ecomomy, there's so many factors involved in a large event and I think the organisers will have to do a lot more to support the small independent brands to get the booking numbers up for next year. I'm not sure how many of us will be rushing to re-book. I for one will give it a lot more careful consideration.

Aside from the problems behind the scenes, we had a great show and met lots of lovely people. It was really nice to see everyone getting into the spirit and just trying things on & especially good to see my two new designs - Night Owl & Wolfdeer receiving a positive reaction.

Now after it's all over I can finally think about Christmas - I just need to get rid of this stinking cold!