I’m back from a full day of buying yesterday! My dad drove us down to the showrooms and my mom and I went through and did the actual buying. It was so much fun getting to do this again, selecting the clothes is my favorite part of the process. And I got shut down on the pictures again guys, sorry! Anyways, here’s a complete recap of everything that went down:

12:00
We arrive in downtown LA and I’m SO happy because we’ll actually have time to eat before the appointments.

12:20
After parking the car, I realize that’s far from the case.

12:30 - The New Mart
We head across the street to the New Mart for our first appointment at Kathy Walker Sales. Every building in downtown LA is seriously ancient. The elevators are so old and slow and it takes hours just for them to get to our floor.

Another thing I notice….no one goes to Fall II/Holiday/Resort market week. Seriously, the other times I’ve been there (for Fall and Spring) there’s a mob of buyers waiting for the elevator at the New Mart. This time, only about a handful of people were down there.

So we got to the showroom about five or ten minutes later. It’s a pretty nice space and they carry 7 or 8 lines here (including Gypsy 05 and Linea Pelle). Each sales rep in the showroom reps all of the lines broken up by location, which seems pretty unique because I usually see a rep per brand. Anyways, after all that rushing the sales rep tells us she’s running behind and can’t take us at the moment. Now I start to get kind of worried because I spaced my appointments out by an hour plus we had plans for the evening, but I find out that there really isn’t such a thing called a “scheduele” in this industry. Oh. Okay. Good to know.

But I still like to be on time.

12:45 - Designers & Agents (Trade Show)

Since there’s time to kill, we hop on those slow-as-mollasses elevators and head on to the third floor to check out D&A. And for the second year in a row, I’m disappointed with the merchandise being shown here. I thought it was only me, but I found out that this show has a good reputation of having a pretty bad selection. Ouch! Honestly, it’s true. You’ll find a few gems (Alice & Olivia, Iro and a couple other big brands show there), some decent denim lines, and lots of great accessories, but that’s about it.

1:00 - Kathy Walker Sales
We’re back at the showroom, and the rep can take us now. She’s a really cool girl, and gives us a ton of valuable insight about the business and the lines as well. She was very honest about which pieces would sell well and which to stay away from. While I was there I took a look at two new lines for fall; one clothing and one accessories. Oh, and the rep even had to pull a few strings for me to be able to get both collections, because both of the lines were planning on cutting off distribution to online sales. And it’s understandable, since we are brand new, but interestingly the fact that we carry Voom helped.

1:45- Sway Showroom

Yup, we’re running about fifteen minutes late for the second appointment of the way. Thankfully the folks over at Sway Showroom on the 9th floor of the New Mart didn’t mind. Once again, the sales reps are super nice an friendly. Everyone says that people in the industry, and sales reps especially, are snobby but I’ve been lucky to only work with the nice ones!

She showed us the new up and coming indie line that will be on OohLaLuxe.com this fall. Okay, people…this line is GORGEOUS. I already had an idea of what pieces I wanted but so many of the pieces were just so beautiful in person. The line is young and hip, but it has a touch of elegance to it, and usually you don’t see both. I went out on a limb with a couple of the choices I made from the line, but hopefully it pays off. It’s pretty funny too because they didn’t even show me one of my absolute favorite pieces from the linesheets because none of the other buyers cared for it. I still don’t get that; I placed an order for the pieces anyways and I’m hoping it goes to production.

And before I headed out the reps show me a handbag line that I’ve never heard of. Cute, I’m thinking, but I was really weary of taking on another line that doesn’t have much press and isn’t well known. Turns out that this line has been gettin a TON of press…I’m talking Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives etc., pretty much the who’s who of stylish celebs and TV shows. How did I miss this brand? And I wanted to add some bags/clutches for the holidays. They also had a very flexible minimum, so of course I took advantage of the opportunity. I ordered four clutches and five make up bags from them. They’re super cute with this great mixture of patent croc and suede. I honestly can not wait to get them!

2:30 - Voom @ Brighte

Honestly I can’t remember what time it was, but we probably weren’t on time after having to rush back across the street and register TWICE; once for the CMC (why they need this, I don’t know) and also to get into the Brighte ENK trade show, which always takes forever. They gave us free bags though so I can’t complain too much.

I meet up with the rep for Voom who actually remembers me, which is pretty amazing since it’s been almost a year since I’ve been there. My budget is so much tighter this time around than it was last year so I had to pass up a couple of cute Voom pieces, but I’m very happy with what I got. Picked up couple of cute little black dresses and some others.

We looked around the tradeshow as well, which is smaller than D&A but they have a better selection, in my opinion.

To sum it all up, the trip was successful. I did go over budget, again, but it was a good over budget and not an “I have no self control” over budget. I picked up four new lines, which will be revealed sometime tomorrow, so be sure to check back for the Fall preview!