Dear Vast Readership, please accept my humblest apologies for the lack of posts over the last month. I was travelling – and had an aversion to extended periods spent at the computer. Don’t despair, I was thinking of you while I was away.

 

So, what did I miss? Hope you’ve all been keeping well in my absence. I’m great, and as is always the way when returning from a trip – I have lots to report!

 

I’d like to preface the following by saying that travel for work is not always as glamorous as it sounds – days are spent pounding pavements and trying to manage sensory overload, followed by time spent trying to communicate with the office and respond to emails, followed by big night outs (because when in Rome…). That said, my trip included time in NYC, London, Paris, Sicily, Rome, Hong Kong & Sydney – so how bad can it be!

 

There were several purposes for the trip – but the primary reason was my annual reconnaissance mission. In our business, it’s imperative to get a sense of what’s happening in retail, product design, fashion trend, etc, internationally to help form a style direction for our new ranges. Paul, SunnyLIFE’s chief, joined me on the trip where we visited hundreds of department stores and independent retailers, plus a few trade fairs.

 

Without going into too much detail, I will tell you I have come back incredibly inspired! Living on an island, as we do, we might not see all things happening on the mainland(s). The more I see, the more I’m nourished – so right now I feel fully feed. What we’ve seen will now be disseminated with our design team and turned into new products, prints, patterns, colours and styling concepts for our new ranges (which, as I previously explained – start development 12 months out).

 

I love visiting stores overseas – given the size of the markets we were visiting, there is so much choice and diversity in retail. The picture above is me at the world-famous Colette in Paris. If you’re heading to any of the above destinations feel free to email me for advice on the best shopping destinations.

 

I also managed to squeeze in a couple of beach in Sicily for some intensive research. It’s amazing what I learnt from the comfort of my sun lounge!

 

I arrived back to a new desk in a new office (we’ve moved upstairs)… Got to get back to my ‘To Do’ list!

 

In my next post, I’ll share some exciting news from the Sydney Gift Fair – you won’t believe it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Joel Says. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.