the Wry Baby Blog

The best thing about going to the New York International Gift Fair is getting to see first hand how people react to what you’re putting out there. Since our stores do well with Wry Baby and have fun with it, it’s pretty easy to have a great time talking to whoever walks onto our bright red carpet (I totally blew a chance to take some pics of one of our favorite web stores, wishingfish.com). The worst part of the show is trying to survive the show itself! It’s fun, but pretty exhausting. And not just because you’re dealing with the crowds, but often your fellow vendor neighbors. Some are fun (like our awesome Channel Craft friends) and some are just, well, a nuisance. Check out this neighbor who seemed to like our booth better than his today!

Our neighbor in his natural environment.

Hmmm. This looks interesting.

Plenty to read in the Wry Baby booth!

After the show we took off to the South Street Seaport to take a water taxi to the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. So fun! It was just and hour and pretty non-cheesy. From there, a quick subway ride to see Mary Poppins on Broadway! Kelly scored us seats second row center and it was amazing. Can’t recommend it enough. I know, Disney on Broadway, but really, it was fantastic.

There was a great public art piece in progress involving waterfalls and the Brooklyn Bridge. We were all saddened to learn that our tour would not be pulling up directly underneath them.

More old friends, even more new friends and a lot more love for our new organic baby clothes! At this point the whole thing really becomes Groundhog Day for everyone. You know, almost the same exact day every day. It’s mixing up your precious off time after the show that saves your soul. Here are some highlights from today:

Our #1 Proud Parent Pin salesman takes a well deserved break at the Wry Baby Organics display.

Nothing clears the head after a busy show day like shopping! Tonight we visit the world’s greatest used book store, the Strand. Our good friends at Gibbs Smith publisher gave us this great bag today and it only seemed appropriate to use it at the Strand where we planned to spend most of our hard won lucre.

A little Vietnamese near Union Square and it’s off on the R back to get bach to our hotel and some Olymipics action. Gotta get some quality z’s before we have to get up to live the same exact day we’ve been living for the last three days!

Today was much busier that the first with lots of old friends coming by for re-orders and to check out the newness. Rockridge Home in Oakland, CA, Pop Deluxe from Wisconsin and many, many more. Super fun. It may only be day two of the big New York International Gift Fair, but our new organics line is doing great. The most loved is the gift set we put together with a Wry Baby organic snapsuit and the excellent organic body wash and lotion set from Bath by Bettijo.

Anothe piece of the new line of organic baby clothes from Wry Baby.

It’s Sunday and the New York International Gift Fair opens today! It’s an early morning for Michael and Dave as they forage for lunch and coffee before taking the shuttle from the hotel to the Javits and into the booth for final prepping before facing the crowds. The booth turned out great, but we knew it would because our scale model told us so.

The Wry Baby booth during set-up and the final product on opening day. Big diff!

We never really got a chance to shoot any shots of the crowds in the Wry Baby booth. One reason was that we were super busy all day. Just as we finished helping a fun store, there was another waiting to see the fun new organics line. Yay! Traffic was heavy all day and by the time it let up, it was time to shut it all down for the day. But if it’s crowds ye be seakin’ get a load of the steaming heap of humanity that we had to wallow in waiting to get on the shuttle back to the hotel! Gee-ro-dee.

Before us, the longest shuttle line ever.

And you thought we were at the BACK of the line. Here’s how far our shuttle line stretched

Finishing set-up a day early at the NYIGF means you get the day before the show to do what you want. And for the Wry Baby crew, that means hanging out together! A walk through central park, a trip to the zoo and a romp in SOHO makes for a perfect day in NY before being stuck in the Javits for four days.

Team Wry Baby at the entrance to the NY Zoo in Central Park shortly before marveling at an enormous multitude of Fruit Bats and swimming polar bears.

It’s set up day at the NYIGF and what a joyous time we had! Kidding. Set-up sucks. Although when it’s done we get to buy ourselves a $13 martini somewhere cool and somehow it makes it aallll worth it. We usually get to the Javits Center (NY’s giant convention center) as early as we can in the hopes we can finish by the early afternoon. You know, for the expensive martini. Sadly, the events that follow took us 8 hours! See why, friends:

Welcome to Jacob Javits Convention Center! Here’s the lobby, early on the first set-up day. Need some coffee? Fuggetaboutit! All coffee stations closed! Ha ha ha hah!

Wry Baby crates full of cool baby clothes await us in the Wry Baby booth. This is always (and I mean ALWAYS) a welcome sight. Because if these guys don’t show, no show! This is how you pray each set-up day starts. Only with coffee.

First things first, we set up our custom-made hardwall system. So shiny! Oh, that’s Michael, BTW. Our head of sales, product development and shiny-hardwall-wall setting-up.

Next we hang the posters and unpack the crates. Which means covering every inch of carpet in stuff, insuring we don’t have anywhere to walk, work or rest. Remember in the ’70s, when Baskin-Robbins would have posters for the new flavors of the month? That’s what we try to do every show with our new fun baby gifts.

Is it me, or does it look like Michael’s doing all the work?

Well, someone has to hang back and take to pictures! Sheesh.

Up goes Wry Baby’s newest offering, the line of hilarious organic baby clothes and gift sets. All nice and special on the corner display.

All the empty boxes are returned to the crates and most of the trash thrown away. We’re finally finished! Can you believe that took 8 hours!? Can you believe how much it still looks like a mess? Trust me, things look way better once the Javits crew lays down the nice carpets in the aisles and the show lights come on. Of course, the booth looks even better when it’s packed full of excited buyers (not the foam core ones, either). Time for that martini!

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I’ve shown you the great lengths we go to to insure that our booth full of funny baby clothes sets up like we want it to once we get to NY. Well, the anal retentiveness doesn’t stop there. We also like to construct a scale model of the airports we’ll be departing from and arriving to. This year, it’s Charlotte International Airport and JFK in NY. We like to plot our best routes to our terminal and even optimal bathroom locations so our trip goes as smoothly as possible. Overkill you say? We say Wry Baby is always prepared for anything!

The scale model of the Charlotte International Airport we built (pictured above) is not nearly as detailed as the separate cross-section we made of the Jet Blue terminal showing bathroom locations and magazine shops with little scale candies and snacks. All the tiny sugar-glass shot glasses with NASCAR logos were made by Kelly and will be delicious to snack on when we return from NY. Our model of JFK is just as impressive and much more crowded with foam core travelers.

Wry Baby is in full show mode as we prepare to take off to NY for the hugemungous New York International Gift Fair. I mentioned before the kind of craziness we go through before the show, such as building a scale model of what the booth will look like and how we theme the booth to what we happen to be launching. Well, the cat’s out of the bag that we’re bringing a line of Organic baby clothes and organic gifts to the mix this year and here’s what we’re planning to showcase that newness.

Above is our booth model for this Summer! Front and center will be a display case made of fruit crates that holds our new line of organic baby clothes and organic baby gift sets. The case will sit on a platform covered with grass and we plan on stringing the organic clothes up on a line above the display. I’m supposed to paint some signage to sprinkle around to give it that authentic “organic market” feel, but right now I have no idea what I’ll do about that! Last minute panic, anyone?

The wall coverings are vinyl banners that we make whenever there’s something new and banner worthy. We re-use them for other shows and if we have to cycle something out to make room for new ones, we send them on a tour of our fun stores so they can use them!

So real, it’s like you’re there! See how happy the foam core people are? You have to watch out for foam core people at the actual show. They are not only very grumpy people, but they are also crazy flammable!

Our funny baby clothes business has become a local industry leader overnight. For some reason we looked up the Wikipedia entry for our hometown in North Carolina and found that we’re listed in the summation as a local industry powerhouse. Mooresville is home to Lowes Home Improvment Warehouse headquarters, a smattering of famous NASCAR race teams and…wrybaby.com headquarters. I didn’t realize we were that important!

Well! Now that we know where we stand here, you can bet we’ll start smoking imported cigars and meddling in local politics. I’m surprised the town elders haven’t come by to kiss our rings. I’ll have to put a call in about that. Also, we’ll have to start making stuff that produces huge amounts of toxic waste so we can dump it in Lake Norman and laugh about it over giant steaks with the Mayor.

We’re madly preparing our cool baby clothes biz for the upcoming New York International Gift Show next week and we’re super excited as we’re launching a bunch of new, funny baby clothes and unique baby shower gifts (when are we not?). But I thought it might be interesting for folks to get a peek at what’s involved in getting cool baby clothes to market. I shared a while back how we design our big booth o’ fun by building a scale model, but I recently found some cell phone snaps of how it turned out. It was really close to the model! Only bigger. Of course. We were launching our fun baby political tees and funny political onesies, so we were all about the ol’ red white and blue.

Welcome to Wry Baby! Kelly and Michael worked the booth dressed as pollsters of yore. We try to theme our booth every show to fit what we’re launching at the time. It’s expensive, a lot of work, and we’re stupid. But if you’re laying out the major dough to fly here and go shopping, who wants to see the same old thing every year?! Besides, once we’re done outfitting the booth, it’s totally fun.

Kelly and Michael go over the newness. See our Fun Book there in the front bottom right corner? It’s a mock-up! With not even the real cover. It wasn’t scheduled to hit these shores until June, so we had to do with dummies. Good thing the insides were so great! The New Parents’ Fun Book was a big hit before it was even in book form!

Our Pillowcases for New Parents, the Drooly Bib and our fun stacking blocks, Attack of the 50ft. Baby were all on display. Each fun baby gift gets it’s own little fun section because each fun baby shower gift by Wry Baby deserves it. If you happen to be a store (not literally, but you know what I mean), stop by the Wry Baby booth (#1740-1742 in Just Kids Stuff) and see what’s new. I’ll post more of our prep work for this upcoming show soon!