Stacia Spring '09 Debuts at Coterie

After all these years of exhibiting at Coterie, I finally booked myself a ticket on Virgin America and headed for NYC (sans kids!) to check out the show first hand. Even though I have an awesome sales team in place to run the show in NY, I've been meaning to see what all the fuss is about with Fashion Coterie, the industry's biggest and most important show in the biz. The show is held twice a year at the Piers in September (Spring) and February (Fall.) Stacia was conveniently located on Pier 92 in booth 1213 (ironically enough, my booth was across from my old boss Cynthia Rowley's booth!)

Unfortunately the timing of this year's show couldn't be worse. A day after the Lehman Brothers collapse, was the start of the biggest selling season for fashion. The buyers were already in conservative-mode with the lackluster Summer sales and now at the first day of the show, the future of retail couldn't be more uncertain. A lot of New York and New Jersey boutiques outside of the city are especially hurt since their customers are directly affected by the turmoil on Wall Street. And the neck-to-neck race to the White House leaves many buyers unsure of when and if the economy will improve. So to say the least, most buyers walking the show were holding back on writing actual orders and "taking notes" galore. Thankfully, a lot of my regulars stopped by the booth and were anxious to write our Spring '09 line and were happy to report that our knits were "an easy sell."

The highlight of my experience at the show was meeting face to face with some of my favorite boutique owners and buyers - Jill from Ravinstyle.com, Helen from Outerluxe, Sylvia from On My Own, Lezli from Willow Street, and Sloane from Sloane Street. Many are stores I've been selling to consistently since day 1, so to put a face with a name and "talk shop" with them was very rewarding to say the least. Coterie is always the best place to pick up new accounts, so come next Spring you'll be able to find Stacia in even more shops across the country.

The show is also a great way for me to edit the collection (40+ styles) down to a reasonable amount to produce (24 styles.) Some early best-sellers this season were the bamboo fringed scarf (all colors), poolside dress in Studio, swing cardi in Eames, cable knit tunic in Heirloom, hook n' eye tunic in Feather, empire braided dress in Bluebell, matte/shine vee top in Sea Salt, and the flutter wrap dress in Ti Leaf.

It's also a good time to listen to buyers needs and wants since I'm starting to work on the Fall '09 collection and can take in to consideration their needs. Some recent requests have been to bring back the bamboo cocoon sweater for Fall since it's been flying out the stores. Another request was to design a special hangtag for my bamboo garments to educate the consumer about our eco-friendly yarns. So all in all, it was great fun to meet my buyers, spot trends in the aisles, hang with my NY crew, and listen to my customers needs, and all in a days work!