Coming into market we had no idea what to expect. Honestly, we hoped to get 3, maybe 5 shops willing to introduce leather to their customers. We worked hard to develop an eduction program for shop owners so they could pass that knowledge on to their customers and it paid off. We are thrilled to say we have 12 shops that will be carrying GWL leather and teaching our projects, with another a dozen or so that were extremely interested. We gave out hundreds of catalogs and traffic to our website has skyrocketed. This might not sound like much to you, given the number of shops across the country, but we are THRILLED beyond words.
Market was an amazing experience. So many opportunities were offered, partnerships, commissions, magazine articles, book deals (sorry I already have a publisher) and, yes, GWL will have kits in Nancy’s Notions soon. Given the number of times we heard ‘finally something new’ and ‘I am so tired of cork’, I’d say the timing was perfect for our market debut. Heck, we had the president of one of the big machine manufactures come tell us that we were the talk of the show and that we now had every machine educator trying to figure out how to incorporate leather into their classes.
When I first started working with leather five years ago, I never dreamed we’d be where we are today. It has been a difficult journey over the past two years launching Gypsy Wood Leathers, a complete leap of faith, and here we are, having an impact on a 2 billion dollar a year industry. I’m not kidding myself, I know real work is just beginning but I do feel as if we’ve finally broken through and we are on our way up.
On to Festival!