John Benjamin Formals

My travel season starts in January.  We go down to Atlanta to visit the America’s Mart.  This is where most of the retailers go in the South East to purchase the products they sell in their stores.  It is a huge building with 15 floors stretching a whole block. So as you can picture it is one biiiiiggg building.  All the designers bring their lines for the current and upcoming season to sell to wholesalers.  It is pretty crowded with wall to wall clothes.

First I visit the lines that we already carry first.  I need to see what they have.  This way we can decide if there are any holes in our product selection.  Below are a few pictures to show you what the trade shows are like. 

The showrooms are a little hectic because there are thousands of store owners and their employees going in and out of showrooms. 

Each showroom I work with already takes about 2 hours to go through.   Imagine looking at over 1000 outfits in two hours and doing that 4 times a day and then doing that for 5 days in a row.  As you can see these events are quite hectic and everything starts to look the same.

On top of the 8 hours of looking at outfit after outfit, we go out with clients and show them some of the products that are available to them.   So yes more clothes.  It is ok I love them.

We are usually in Atlanta for about a week. And then we hit the road for about 2 months straight full of meetings with different chapters all over the country.  It is a busy schedule but it is fun and interesting.  I get to meet new people every day. And another plus is I get to travel to places I never would travel to otherwise.