The Presents of the Present : Angels are still hot and so are scented anythings. And while magnolias are blooming, sunflowers have wilted.
So you’re going to a wedding / housewarming / birthday / anniversary / retirement party and you haven’t the foggiest idea for a gift--but it had better be good because everyone will be there and your reputation / career is on the line.
This should work:
An indoor, tabletop fountain, adorned with an angel sipping from a teacup, softly illuminated by a candle that dispenses its aroma therapy while floating atop a magnolia blossom in a pool of tinkling water.
With the appreciative oohs and ahhs, you’ve made a splash of your own, because everyone is impressed by your obvious good taste in gifts.
And no wonder. Such a gift--if it even exists--represents some of the most popular trends in the marketplace, based on the buzz at the huge California Gift Show, which concludes today at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Some 2,000 gift manufacturers and distributors have been showcasing their goods--from fine jewelry to refrigerator magnets--since Saturday. Their audience: an estimated 40,000 wholesale buyers, representing the largest department stores, the smallest mom-and-pop boutiques, the ubiquitous mail-order catalogs and every conceivable retail outlet in town, from the carwash to the hospital gift shop.
Here’s the scoop: Angels are still flying high, decorative garden accessories continue to hit pay dirt, miniature tea sets remain hot, anything to do with aroma therapy is nosing ahead and magnolias (and pansies) are the budding plant picks for ’96.
What about all those sunflowers that plastered everything in ‘95? As trends go, they’re turning into so much mulch, say the green-thumbed arbiters of what’s hot and what’s not.
And so it goes in the self-promoting, second-guessing gift-selling business, which on the one hand tries to heave its own sense of style and trends on us and, on the other, hopes to gauge public taste quickly enough to capitalize on it before the moment is lost.
“Trolls were hotter than hell one year and, the next, we couldn’t give them away,” said Dan Dorsey of CBK Ltd. Inc., a Union City, Tenn., gift importer whose exhibit booth at the trade show encompassed the better part of a ZIP Code.
This year, he’s pushing nylon garden flags with either seasonal or generic appliques, and--like lots of other exhibitors at the show--anything decorative that features magnolia blossoms.
“We know magnolias are going to be big this year,” he said. “After the Atlanta and Dallas gift shows, we got calls telling us to put anything with magnolias up front.”
There didn’t appear to be any ’96 versions of Pet Rocks or mood rings at this year’s trade show, but Alan Harris was delighted that buyers gawked at the fake-fish aquariums his Pasadena company, SK & I, imports from Japan.
The plastic fish with magnetic centers, looking reasonably realistic at first glance, move randomly about in the water, repelled by spinning magnets beneath the sand.
“No more dead fish,” Harris said matter-of-factly. “And when you go on vacation, you just turn them off.”
If the show offered witness to consumers’ thirst for gift products, it also was testament to the entrepreneurial spirit to quench it--even if it meant, as it did for Donny Sierer, throwing his life’s savings into a hunch.
Sierer, a Van Nuys saxophonist, rented a booth in the far back corner of one huge exhibit hall, the trade show equivalent to the cheap seats, where he aired his compact disc “Jazz-a-Bye.”
It is a collection of traditional lullabies but performed playfully in jazz arrangements by him and his three musician buddies.
“Most parents feel that if they have to play children’s songs one more time at bedtime, a life is going to be lost,” he said. “At least this is something a parent can stand to listen to.”
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Another gift show first-timer was Beth Seligman of Los Angeles, who makes decorative candles in her garage and is now searching for retail outlets. Her Kaleidoscope Kandles feature pieces of stained glass embedded in the wax, which glisten as the candles burn down.
Of course, her candles are scented as well. “Scents are big business,” she advised knowingly. “I read it in Entrepreneur magazine.”
And meet the brothers Brito, Ron and Mike, who along with Paul Villareal have formed the mighty-sounding North American Products Co. of Glendora. Their sole product: telephone ear cushions, called Ear Buffs. They come in black, raspberry and teal. They say they even use ‘em themselves during their day jobs--as mortgage brokers.
“Smaller inventors are coming to us now because of the name of our company,” Ron Brito said. “We expect to launch five new gift products by June.”
Some gift manufacturers are on their second lap around the track. Marilyn Englund used to make wooden puzzles, but they weren’t profitable. Now she’s spending $3,000 to come to the trade show from Portland, Ore., to hawk her new product--synthetic chamois towels, sewn together as mitts (one size fits all) so they don’t fall when you dry your car.
She also features faux-chamois mitts to dry your hair (Mermitts), your dog (Muttmitts) and your cat (Purmitts).
“I’ve sold thousands so far, but I haven’t turned a profit yet,” she said. “And I don’t know if I should focus on the pet market or the car market. Maybe I’m too diverse.”
Bill Hunter faced a similar marketing dilemma and concluded he wasn’t diversified enough. He sells colorful, hand-woven, 100% cotton dog leashes and dog collars. (If you want a matching key chain, buy all three in a fine pine gift box for $39).
“This is my sixth year in the business,” he said. “The first four years I worked the pet shows, but now I’m branching out into the gift shows too. This is an impulse gift item. I mean, you’re not really buying it for the dog, are you? You’re buying it for yourself.”
