2020 Atlanta Market was a success!! Jentrie had a market packed with appointments, impromptu meetings and bumping into some industry friends that all added up to an exhausting, yet successful market. I often hear people say “market sounds fun and I’d love to tag along with you sometime” but after I explain what market really is, they usually say “we’ll pass” and then offer us good luck.
To give you an idea of how we approach market, we layout a game plan for each day. The first day or two we do some “scouting or bird dogging” where we try to pick out new vendors that we’ve heard about or that we had on our list from previous markets, but never got to. These vendors are critical to how we merchandise our stores as they always have something new and fresh to compliment the successful lines we already carry. We scope out their products and either decide to set up on appointment or if it’s just not the right fit, we cross them off the list. From there we start going to our existing appointments and the real fun begins. We usually spend hours at each of the showrooms that supply our products where we see what new trends are for the upcoming seasons, visit with other businesses like ours and then start the process of writing orders. This is an exhausting task that wipes you out by the end of the day. As we power through the market, it all starts to fall into place. Orders are written, shipments are confirmed and arrival dates are agreed upon. Ironically, it seems like the market goes by in a flash even though we spend 7 days there. The Atlanta market has 3 huge buildings and it’s literally impossible to go into every single available showroom. While we haven’t mastered it yet, we are certainly getting better at it.
We hope you like what’s coming to Jentrie because this market was by far the most merchandise that we’ve ever purchased. Thanks for always supporting us and we can’t wait to see you in the stores soon!
Jen