Sizzling Sydney

Hi there,
Just returned from a short trip to Sydney, for business of course!
Helen and I visited an Indian apparel and home textiles trade fair in Darling Harbour. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some companies we deal with, with out travelling for 2 days to Delhi or South India, (even though I love doing that). Found a great organic t-shirt company from South India, who have really envirnmentally sustainable ethics, as well as supporting their local comunity. They had some beautiful knits, and samples of their recycled cotton tshirt cloth, tres cool! We will begin to use them in Autum hopefully with a new kids Pj range that I have been working on.
Sydney was steaming hot, so a swim was essential every day. We stayed in Manly, in a gorgeous guest house on the harbour edge called Periwinkle. Lovely people, and they let us stay in a different room each night to experience the entire place!
We caught up with my niece Kristy McLaughlin, who is an up and coming interior designer based in Manly, watch out for her website coming soon with gorgeous bedheads and chairs that she has designed.
Sydney is such a cool place, manly beach at 6.30 on a week morning has more people on it than Takapuna beach on Sundays, running, walking, surfing, swimming or just strutting their stuff.
And the food... We were sent on a misson to eat at Fratelli Fresh, an Italian deli/fresh food store/cafe in Potts Point, and yes, it is good! Auckland needs a place like this, preferably in Birkenhead please?

Trip to Canton

Bill and I have just returned from a trip to Guangzhou, China. This is the home of the famous Canton fair, which showcases everything China exports, from bulldozers to bedlinen, pineapple lumps, surgical products, and everything between! The fair is located in an amazing new exhibition complex, which is absolutely enormous. The Home Textile hall takes around 2 days to walk around and this is where we spent our time of course, taking the opportunity to catch up with existing suppliers, find some new ones and see what the rest of the world are sourcing.
This time there was a large proportion of stands selling frilly 3-D nylon bedspreads and polyester floral tablecloths, so somewhere in the world, these items must be in demand! We did found some new potentials, which you may see over the coming year. I love chatting to other suppliers on each stand, to see where in the world they come from, and the type of product they are sourcing. Met a lovely Indian couple from Britain on one stand, who have a wholesale business selling to 80 stores including Harrods. There were lots of Europeans there this time, less Americans than ever, which was interesting, as China has built its export industry around the enormous buying power of the USA. Overall there were less buyers than ever, which is the hangover from the recent stormy recession which seemed to grip the entire world. We did notice the odd salesman dozing, which obviously was a sign of the lack of customers.

On the last afternoon we found the Bags hall, which was at least as big as Home textiles, I had no idea the quantity of bags that are sold each year! Bill also found the Outdoor Adventure hall, which was full of fishing and hunting knives, mai-mai outfits, and action man stuff. I dragged him away before he tried to include a few bits into our next season.
The local Cantonese food is special, although not to our taste. It seems that every part of each animal is a delicacy there, as seen in the photo menus, and sometimes the English translations make the food even less attractive. We laughed a lot at mealtimes, lost our appetites and defaulted to chocolate for dinner a couple of times. Quite a good weight loss programme actually.
Huge thanks to Nana and Christine for handling the kids while we were away, and to our wonderful team at Wallace Cotton for keeping the business on course in our absence.