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2017 Atlanta Market Strong

The Atlanta January Market finished its eight day run and reports strong attendance and sales. In spite of weather issues around the country, show management reports record breaking new-buyer registration and an increase in international attendance. A rep principal at the mart commented that she felt customer confidence was strong, and that buyers were there, ready to buy… and buy big! This is continued good news coming off December 2016 posting a 4.1% increase over December 2015. Total retail sales for 2016 showed a increase of 3.3% and experts expect 2017 to be about the same with online sales leading the way.
 
We had several productive meeting in Atlanta and had the opportunity to review several line extensions and new introductions from our licensees. Bethany Lowe added 4 additional skus in our already established “Night before Christmas” collection.

They also added new products to our Halloween collections and reviewed new art for future introductions. We also met with Demdaco who launched their first wave of products featuring Kim Parker illustrations.

We were happy with their execution and quality of the Kim Parker scarf collection and excited about the additional categories being added in July. We are confident this collection will perform well and Demdaco will be a great partner. Metcolors’s showroom looked great, as usual. They are one of our  wall décor licensees and they have created an alternative treatment which they applied to several of our illustrations. We loved the look and feel it has a strong application beyond wall décor. Take a look and give us your thoughts.

We saw several new trends that we have already begun to react to. A few of the major trends we saw were lake driven art, flamingos, mermaids, animals including dogs (Labs, Golden Retrievers, Boston Terries and French Bulldogs) as well as cats and farm animals. We also spotted in several showrooms artwork of  animal portraits wearing wild flower crowns, (animals were traditionally dogs, foxes and cows).
 
Vintage continues to be a trend in everyday, as well as Christmas. Images of vintage campers and retro-style red pickup trucks with Christmas trees in the back found their way in the majority of the Christmas showrooms.

We now have our own version ready to go!
 
Farm  and industrial farm are still a big look and will continue to flourish due to the influence from  Chip and Joanna Gaines’ popular show on HGTV.
 
Please let us be a part of your PD team. Send us your wish list and we will be happy to do a little digging.
 

Mike Waldner | Director of Licensing
1100 Waterway Boulevard | Indianapolis , IN 46202
phone (317) 489- 6973 | mwaldner@curtislicensing.com
Curtis Licensing | The Saturday Evening Post