{"id":31165,"date":"2019-10-08T09:02:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T13:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=31165"},"modified":"2019-10-08T09:02:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T13:02:07","slug":"this-just-in-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=31165","title":{"rendered":"This Just In!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor socks from Maggie Stern Stitches.<\/p><\/div>
\nEven though my non-book budget is\u00a0mostly allocated for the year, with orders of scarves and candles and buttons and holiday cards and pretty things\u00a0arriving\u00a0in heaps of boxes from now through mid-December, I still discover fun things\u00a0I can’t resist\u00a0buying for the store\u00a0while exploring the trade show floor at NEIBA, our New England Independent Booksellers Association’s fall conference.
\nI remember when our regional trade show exhibits were so filled with vendors they could barely fit into the convention center space. Every major publisher and most small publishers exhibited books throughout the giant room, and ‘sidelines’ vendors (sidelines are non-book gifts, greeting cards, games, and toys) had at least two or three aisles of tables. Now the show floor is much smaller than it was in the glory days of the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, and is set up for just one day instead of three.\u00a0Still,\u00a0it continues to hold surprises.
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\nMy favorite discoveries\u00a0are those companies that are still small and new enough (or local enough to the convention) that the cost of exhibiting is worth the exposure to a group of booksellers. Once those companies grow large enough, they outgrow the regional trade shows\u00a0and only go to BookExpo. So NEIBA is a great place to find up-and-comers. Some of this year’s catch:
\nMaggie Stern Stitches socks. The display of socks featuring noteworthy women stopped me in my tracks with their bright colors and current political figures. Not only is the beloved and ubiquitous RBG featured, but Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Sonia Sotomayor, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u00a0make an appearance!
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\nThere’s even a photo of Madeleine Albright wearing Maggie Stern’s Albright socks in their catalog (this image comes from Facebook):
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\nI also visited our new Taza Chocolate<\/a> friends, whose unique and delicious treats debuted at our store this spring and summer and have been a great success. They were showing off some irresistible new items,\u00a0too many of which I sampled.\u00a0From egg nog crunchy chocolate wheels (I was extremely skeptical, but it tasted great) to\u00a0vegan paleo dairy-free cane-sugar-free almond milk quinoa crunch squares (delicious; the entire bag was gone before I got home from the show), these will also be on our shelves for the holidays.
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\nThose samples the Taza folks generously heaped upon me have made it to the store’s snack box (well, most of them made it), to the great delight of staff. In the avaricious words of my colleague, Emily: “What. Is. THAT?!” That, my dear Em, is a Raspberry Crunch bar. YUM! We both enjoyed it on Sunday and even left half the bar for everyone else. We were angelic to do so.
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\n(Side note to Taza:\u00a0I would love to see\u00a0higher-res images on\u00a0your website!\u00a0Many of them don’t do justice to the handsome packages\u00a0and delicious contents of your chocolate. They look so much better in person and I want people who newly encounter them to see them at their best.)
\nFinally, I noticed some cork-backed coasters from Drinks On Me Coasters<\/a> with sayings that made me laugh. We haven’t ever carried coasters before, and I’m not sure I’ll bring these in, but they looked good\u00a0up close (the website makes the colors look a little more garish than they actually are) and could be a funny gift.
\nA few samples:
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\nOne of their coasters was an adaptation of something from one of my favorite Sapling Press cards (the organic vegetables \/ regular donuts card),\u00a0which did make me wonder about the sources for all the sayings. (I used to assume that people just put their own funny thoughts on the T-shirts and mugs and cards and coasters they sold, but that was naive. There is a lot of overlap and borrowing in the merchandise world, since it’s so easy to make products, and it can be hard to know the origins of things.) Still, there were plenty of funny things I’ve never seen before, and we might give these a try for December!
\nI also admired the new items and made an order with\u00a0OrangeArt<\/a>, which carries the most beautiful, appealing\u00a0stationery items and fountain pens and art supplies, and am finishing up a restock with Christie at Semaki & Bird<\/a>, whose earrings and nature notepads have sold and sold for us over the years, and which is always adding clever and\/or beautiful new designs.
\nIt was a good show for sidelines, and so now, while I am not in any\u00a0psychic sense ready for the holidays, I am retail-ready for the holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New small gift-item treasures we found at the NEIBA trade show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}