We had a pleasant surprise this week! When one of my sales reps stopped by, he had company, Tiim Prowse, national sales manager for MMFab (South Sea Imports & Wilmington Prints).
Tim was tagging along on the rep's calls to get opinions from shops. What fun for me, because I got to see one step back in the process of designing fabrics and bringing them to print!
Most companies nowadays take orders, working not from sample swatches of cloth, but from 11" x 18" pictures of the artwork. This time, Tim showed me some pictures of a new floral line, a take-off on their forthcoming "Bouquet Gallery" collection which apparently is already a winner.
http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-68880-1.htm South Sea had apparently already settled on one packed floral (with many colors in it) and they were trying to decide on what the coordinates should be. What colors for the background behind the spaced large floral (plum? burgundy? or brown?) and smaller florals (pale lavender? medium lavender? or dark lavender? maybe green? coral?) Also they were trying to determine the best scale for some of the prints (6" repeat? or 8"? how about 10"). They were also working on an apple-themed collection which I'm guessing will be finalized by fall.
That was WAY too much fun! I told Tim that I was thrilled that somebody would actually want my opinion. And told him that he could travel the country doing this, and people probably would be willing to pay HIM for the privilege of having somebody actually
listen to them.
I also suggested that he might want to check out the forum here, in order to better understand what MMFab's end customers really want.
What do you think? Wouldn't you love to have somebody who is truly "in the know" here on the forum?