Last week was quiet at the Soul Flower warehouse up in snowy Saint Paul, Minnesota. But for a few of the Soul Flower buds, February 14-16 was not-so-quiet and quite the opposite of snowy!
On Valentine’s Day, Soul Flower owners Mike & Peggy, along with buds Jenn & Leiah, all headed west to the middle of the desert: Las Vegas, for the biggest fashion tradeshow in the world, MAGIC. MAGIC is a show where hundreds of vendors from all over the country gather to show off their goods and meet with retailers who want to buy their products. Soul Flower is a retailer AND a wholesaler, but at MAGIC Soul Flower was there to buy!
When we arrived in Vegas, we hit the ground running and headed straight to MAGIC from the airport. The rest of the day was spent in the convention center, walking around the show, checking out vendors’ booths that caught our eye, and searching for cool new products to carry at Soul-Flower.com. It’s a lot like shopping, except you’re not shopping for yourself (you’re shopping for ALL Soul Flower customers), and you can’t take anything home. We just placed orders and wouldn’t be seeing the items again until they were shipped to us. Sounds easy, but it is hard work!
What Soul Flower Looked for at MAGIC
At Soul Flower, it was our mission to seek out and buy from vendors who were environmentally and socially conscious. That meant looking for sustainable and eco-friendly fabrics, including organic cotton, recycled polyester, bamboo, and hemp, as well as products made by workers who were treated fairly. We also looked for companies working to improve quality of life for workers, products made in the USA, and items made by independent designers and jewelers.
Of course, it wasn’t always possible to achieve all of these goals in every product we found, but we knew our priorities and what was important to us as a company. Even at MAGIC, there were booths with items we fell in love with at first sight, but when vendors couldn’t give us a straight and confident answer about the conditions at their manufacturing plants or the source of their materials, we had to walk away.
Finding Independent Artists and New Designs
The best thing about MAGIC was discovering awesome new products. A lot of the vendors we bought from were artists: they drew their own designs and screenprinted them themselves, or they designed and handmade their entire line of jewelry. It was inspiring to see what everyone had come up with, and we loved supporting small companies and independent artists so they could continue to follow their bliss. 🙂
We bought some exciting new items from our tried-and-true vendors and found some new up-and-coming companies to work with, too. We were looking forward to introducing some fresh styles to Soul-Flower.com in the coming months.
Our trip to Vegas was short, but jam-packed with meeting and greeting new people, handpicking the best of the best to carry at Soul Flower, and, of course, a TON of walking and people-watching. 🙂
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