Our first Dallas Market is officially in the books!
This January we attended the Total Home and Gift Market in Dallas, Texas for the first time as an exhibitor with some pretty exciting results. We'll share these plus our vision for our growing apron shop in 2023.
If you've ever attended a buyers' market, it can be totally overwhelming, exhausting, exciting and exhilarating all at the same time. The Dallas Market Center has 15 floors and attracts 200,000 buyers each year with permanent showrooms and many temporary ones.
As new vendors, we were placed in the "Temps" area with gourmet kitchen goods on the 12th floor - for makers like us who want to be able to meet buyers who have both gift and apparel shops.
Here are our takeaways from this amazing event:
❤️ We met amazing retailers. Many were from Texas small towns and town squares, which is a dream destination for us.
❤️ We had an opportunity to share our love of building quality time in the kitchen and around the table - our handmade apron is a natural extension of this.
❤️ People love our vintage style and many just stopped to admire! That was a huge compliment and encouragement. We will keep creating for you!
❤️ So honored to meet other vendors. We were able to help each other, have some great laughs and encourage one another in truly unexpected ways.
❤️ With help from our friend Veronica we now have a beautiful booth design ready for the next market.
❤️ So excited to welcome and add three new retailers to our Two Medium Sized Ladies family!!
Our brand has always been focused on quality time in the kitchen and around the table but our core business is garment manufacturing. We spend hundreds of hours sourcing materials, fabric, hardware and trim not to mention the hours making our aprons plus photography, sales, distribution, managing a business, marketing and relationship management.
When you first start in the garment business you don’t know which direction it will grow. Sometimes your product goes vertical (B2C) and sometimes horizontal (B2B). We are excited to say we are doing a combination of both. And the best part is that we get to share life with you - happy times, busy times and creative times too.
Our vision for Two Medium Sized Ladies continues to expand - beyond having pop ups and an online presence to being part of the retail landscape of America's small towns. And we're starting in Texas. We are in three Texas town squares already and plan to continue to help support businesses that are rebuilding the town square with our product line. We hope we find them and they find us! You can also help us find each other.
2023 is going to be wonderful as we lift each other up. Keep creating, make time to be together and above all, enjoy the small moments because they could end up being big.