For those of you who have been coming to or following along with Market updates for years, this is old hat and old news to you. But for those of you who are just a bit newer to this phenomenon known as Quilt Market, Sample Spree is THE place to be the night before Market opens if you are a fabric store. Hundreds of store owners and fabric buyers line up outside the ballroom conference center, the line goes outside and around the building. This time around, the line wove out toward the river....
Everyone is trying to get into the limited ticketed availability of Sample Spree where fabric companies and others set up tables to sell exclusive bundles and precuts of their fabrics and other patterns.
It goes something like this.
1. Fabric manufacturers setting up all of there sneak peek packs of precuts and bundles of fabric. Here the infamous MODA tables are being stocked with all the newest collections of its designers [including yours truly]. Please don't ask what my darling husband is doing in the middle of the MODA tables on a chair, waving his arms.... lets just say that is for another post, after I learn how to upload a video...
2. All is calm and the MODA reps set up and wait to help deal with what is to come the second it is 8:00 and the doors are opened. Notice the doors are closed.
3. Doors open at 8:00 on the dot. And people walk, jog, run and wheel their way to the tables... people spread out all over the place, but admittedly the largest majority head straight for the MODA ensemble and only the fittest survive :-)!!
For us it is a countdown to see how quickly it becomes total and complete insanity. I have to say that as someone who is just there as a spectator, it is a bit entertaining, especially since it is all in order to be the first to buy our advanced fabrics....
4. More folks stream in....
5. And within about 2-3 minutes this is what the previously empty MODA tables look like.
6. At least 3-5 customers deep, the insanity continues until all the fabric bundles are done. the tables are completely empty and everyone goes home exhausted. Happy if they were one of the ones lucky enough to get the collections they were waiting for.
the rest of us go home, happy that set up is done & that another Sample Spree was a wonderful success :-)
And then we all come back the next day to the real business of Quilt Market.
Hope that informative &/or fun to see.
Talk to you soon.
Recent Comments