Recession? What Recession?

There may be a recession going on, but you'd never know it from looking at the crowds of (mostly) women wearily but happily dragging bundle buggies and rolling suitcases full of beads out of the annual Bead & Button market hall after a day of power shopping. The number of attendees this year may be down slightly overall, but those of us who attended made up for it.

There's still 2 days of shopping left at B&B, but already a few vendors are looking at empty hooks, wishing they had brought more stock.

I spent over 10 hours on my feet today, trolling the aisles haggling with vendors, looking for new stuff, and looking at what other retailers are selling, trying to find the next "hot" thing in the marketplace. I've restocked the store on sterling, especially clasps, new stones and found some new goodies as well. Look for at least one major new product launch at BeadFX in the coming months, as well as lots of new items to expand and upgrade our existing lines.

I also had meetings with several manufacturers in the past couple of days to order new products. There's over 50 new colours of delicas en route to the store.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a class with Judy Walker. More on that and the other courses I took here in another post.