I’m back from the big trade show in Las Vegas. It goes through Thursday, but Susie Sunshine is holding down the fort for me so I could come back home and get to work. And lots of work, there is. I learned a good lesson in Vegas. Sometimes the business comes from the most unlikely places.

Things went really slow on Sunday. And Monday. I was starting to wonder if this was a big mistake and that maybe I was throwing my money away being at this show. My husband gave me the “you will never know if you don’t try it” speech and I started to rally by Monday afternoon. Then Nora came by.

Nora said she had received one of my post cards in the mail and then she was really excited to check out my line. She said she was on her way to an association meeting in the morning. She loved my stuff and asked if she could perhaps borrow the big ticket sellers to show to her meeting of 140 other independent buyers the next morning. They have a little “competition” between them about who has found the newest hot item. I looked at the time. It was 4:15 and the day wasn’t over until 6:00. Coughing up my “My mom doesn’t want your advice” with an hour and 45 minutes to go would be a BIG sacrifice. I only had one with me and what if someone came by and it wasn’t there to show them?

She mentioned that she wanted to win the informal competition. Then I wanted to Nora to win too. I gave her two shirts and wished her luck.

I mentioned this to someone at the show and suddenly I got the back story I didn’t know. Apparently this “competition” is a huge deal. Apparently the members of this association wear a pink button that lets vendors identify them. Vendors attack them, trying to get them to take their products to the meeting. The person that won last year? Her vendor got her products in 35 stores that year. She said it changed her whole business.

Guess who won? Guess who added 4 stores yesterday that don’t even carry clothing right now? They are furniture stores. But they just had to have the latest and greatest and this year it turns out that is me.

I was clueless. I just wanted to help out Nora. Turns out Nora is already changing my world. Somehow I think I’m getting the better deal.

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