After an exhausting, whistle-stop trip to the Autumn Fair at the NEC in Birmingham we have chosen, what we think, are some fantastic new products for the coming months. As usual with our visits to this amazing trade show we could have quadrupled our ranges of fashion jewellery and Christmas gifts. With great difficulty we forced ourselves to remain selective and successfully resisted going crazy and massively exceeding our budget!

After long discussion and much deliberation over lunch we gathered our brochures together and headed off to place our orders having chosen four new collections that we’re sure you'll love. These include two new costume jewellery lines, five quirky scarf hangers in numerous colours, some fabulous kids personalised wall plaques and some great men’s giftware.

After placing our orders we got chatting with one of our new suppliers who told us they had been exhibiting at the show for around 20 years. We found this really surprising as we have been attending this show for the last 6 years and had never spotted them before. The difference this year, however, was that they had spent a lot of time redesigning the look of their stand and building some beautiful display podiums which set off their jewellery to perfection. These were what caught our eye as we approached their stand and made us take a closer look. It just shows you the difference a bit of thought and imagination can make!

Every year Daniel and I comment on how important we feel it is for exhibitors to spend time planning their displays and making the most of the space they have. We see stands every year that look like they have just turned up and thrown their stock out on a table or hung products randomly up on the walls. I don’t think we’ve ever stopped and looked closely at the products these people are selling. If exhibitors can't take pride in their display we have no doubt that they will find it hard to encourage anyone to take a closer look and more importantly be interested in buying from them, no matter how good the products they are selling are. After spending thousands of pounds on an exhibition space it just seems like complete madness not to make the most of it.

Our new supplier, Rodney Holman, is a perfect example of how “getting it right” can make all the difference. They had multiple positive comments about how good their stand looked this year and I'm sure they have seen a big increase in orders and enquiries! Some of the hundreds of stands we visited were outstanding and photographs of their displays would not have looked out of place in top-notch glossy magazines.

We hope to take delivery of all our orders by the end of September and can’t wait to get the photographs and descriptions done so we can get them uploaded onto our website for you all to see. Don’t forget to keep an eye on our Facebook for updates on all our new arrivals.