lulu & merie
I fell in love with these decorative playing cards. Available in three styles, each set comes with a notepad and pencil. It's a perfect hostess gift or stocking stuffer—these cards are so stylish your customers will want to leave them on display.

Epson
Epson launched their new, wide-format printer at the show (Stylus Pro 7880). It enables store owners to print 24" paper—perfect for selling customized gift wrap. The wholesale cost on the printer is $2995, and it's an easy and economical way to sell more personalized products.

Gauge
Gauge's whimsical yet elegant cake toppers are a special keepsake, personalized with the couple's first name. Simply display one in your store and Gauge will drop-ship the customized cake topper directly to your customer (or to your store for pick-up).

Wallies
These are practical and fun peel-and-stick chalkboard surfaces that are available in 21 styles. They also have two adorable children's murals. I love this product for the children's (or the home office) section of your store!

Notes & Queries
This leading distributor of design paper companies from Europe offers a beautiful line from Archivist, whose cards all feature pop-ups. The butterfly card's amazing detail caught my attention immediately.

Five more!

Kate Aspen
Adorable party favors that are all under $1.50 wholesale. The packaging is incredibly well done: a baby shower party favor includes an egg timer with a message that says, "About to Hatch;" and a bridal shower favor is a champagne bottle in a bucket with a message that says, "It's about time." If you have a wedding section, this is an adorable addition.

Anna Griffin
Anna Griffin launched beautiful, die-cut cards, wrapping paper, bags and luggage tags at the show. The patterns on the bags and luggage tags are inspired by their gorgeous paper, so be sure to check out all the new products on their website!

La Loupe
Pre-packaged set of 42 cards/44 envelopes for eight occasions, including birthday, thank you and blank. The outside box designs are very trendy and come in four styles. These are a great gift product to stock and would make a colorful store display. 

Sharmista Greetings
These beautiful cards are embroidered using a digitized machine and they are made of 100% recycled paper (cotton rag waste). Very unusual and beautiful cards.

Friendship Gift Bag
These clever gift bags were created for the purpose of re-gifting. The giver is encouraged to add artwork, then the recipient does the same and re-gifts, etc. All bags have a unique registration number and can then be tracked on their secure website. Currently, the bags are available in five styles.

NSS had lots of unusual products as well… here are five.

Karen Callen Designs
A very unique, super-soft hand-painted cork collection (that feels like leather) which includes wallet, planner, business card holder, contact lens holder and handbag. I love the artistic look.

Naos Graphics
A wonderful line of handmade pop-up greeting cards made in the US. (The owner has a degree in architecture which explains the high-end design.) It was hard to choose which card to feature because the entire line is worth checking out! Be sure to take a look at the accordion calendars on their website.

Pictura
A creative line of birthday cards from Pictura called "Vintage Year." The outside of the card features a bottle of wine and a choice of years (so the customer can choose the recipient's birth year). On the inside there is a section of the card called "From the Vine" that includes advice on wine; a second section, "In the Year," describes what happened in the news the year they were born. An adorable concept!

Divine Basics
This company has developed more than 250 flower pens that look (and some feel) amazingly real. In addition, they've launched four acid-free fragrances (spring bouquet, vanilla rain, ginger mist, and rich earth to spray on the flower pens and your stationery.

Up With Paper
Up With Paper has done it again—developed a gorgeous new twist on a pop-up product with their new gift embellishments called "The Finishing Touch." They have 12 designs in total (six are Christmas) and the detail and quality are fantastic. If you sell gift wrap, you must add this line to your store!

Stay tuned next week for more products from the show!

I've unpacked my bags from the show and now have hundreds of brochures spread out on the floor. My goal for after the show was to blog about five fabulous products per day, but to be honest, it's been incredibly hard to choose which products to talk about with so many great companies and concepts to feature!

But I'm sticking to my goal of only five per day, and these were my picks for today:

Alicia Klein
I instantly fell in love with Alicia Klein's new line of laptop bags called Safari. The bags are available in 12 styles and are made with real calf hair (due to the high quality, they won't shed). This bag is the essence of form meeting function and style! Klein also introduced a more traditional line of bags (Metropolis), which are very attractive, sleek black bags with patent trim available in innovative shapes. I think these bags will be a big seller during the holidays.

Smitten Kitten
Handmade in Canada, these funky notepads feature vintage wallpaper and are available in seven styles. All feature a built-in pencil holder. Tres chic!

Wine-O Cards
Clever cards that fit around the top of a wine bottle. Available in 41 styles, and printed on 100% recycled paper with soy based inks, these are the perfect gift tag for a wine bottle. Their tradeshow display quickly caught my attention, and you could easily re-create it in your store to sell the cards (even on a smaller scale the display would make an impact).

Chronicle Books
An amazing pop-up bird book that includes seven fantastically-detailed habitats. Each page has accompanying audio of bird songs to match the birds. This is a must-add book for your store—I think it will be a power seller this holiday season.

Gifts That Bloom
Create a garden when you blow bubbles with this clever two-in-one product. Dip the wand in the special bubble solution, blow and you'll be spreading a mixture of eight southwest wildflowers. The product is completely bio-degradeable and is a perfect addition to your garden section. 

Did you see any new products at the show that you loved? Let us know what you found! Reply here or share in the forum.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more products from NSS.

I just returned home from the NY Stationery Show sporting three bags full of fun new products and two aching feet (but it was worth it!). The show was very exciting, and the highlights for me were meeting new vendors and seeing new lines from the veterans.

Here are five fresh product picks of the day from the show:

Scentsational Greetings
Fun and creative greeting cards that utilize scents. The cards are available in six fragrances and 48 designs, like birthday cards scented with vanilla. Other fragrances include lemon, coffee, ocean and rose.

KatBlu
A beautiful and intricate line of lasercut wedding cards. (A cat is hidden in every design, adding a playful element.) Available in 8 designs.

BYO Bliss
Elegant scrapbook designed to capture your customers' favorite memories from their first ten years of marriage: the wedding, anniversaries, children, travel and home moves. Thought-provoking questions provide a great opportunity to capture details that will be interesting to reflect on in future years. As a dedicated scrapbooker, this is a must-have for my personal collection.

Volpino
Gorgeous Italian accessories made from acrylic and Swarovski crystals. The belts really "wowed" me.

Fancy That!
A very innovative product that will add pizzazz to any box—patterned shipping tape. I'm sure there are 100 other uses for this fun new product that comes in 10 patterns inspired from vintage fabrics and feed sacks. Their cute tag line says it all… "making functional fabulous."

Stay posted for more products from the show.

Sometimes it's hard to leave your store (or office in my case) to go to a trade show… work is always piling up, the cost of traveling, etc. But at SPREE this year we hosted two after-hours events and I was reminded of the benefits of good networking.

My tip of the day: don't feel guilty for leaving your store. It's worth the time and money to attend more shows this year, and be sure to partake in some of the social events. You never know who you're going to meet!

I just returned home from SPREE, where I was reminded of some of the concepts that continue to produce year after year.

So if you're thinking of opening your first cart or expanding your business, you should consider some of the proven concepts in our industry.

Here is a list of the top 10 product categories for the specialty retail industry.

1. Sunglasses
2. Personalized Products
3. Massage Products
4. Toys & Games
5. Beauty Products
6. Accessories
7. Licensed Merchandise
8. High Tech Products (i.e., iPod accessories and cell phone accessories)
9. Apparel & Specialty Shoes
10. Demonstration Products

One of the number one questions I get asked by cart and kiosk retailers (and specialty leasing managers) is what the newest and most successful retail concepts are right now.

In addition to attending dozens of shows across the country to seek out trendy new products, we produce our own trade show, SPREE, specifically for the cart and kiosk industry. This year's show, SPREE Las Vegas, was a cornucopia of fun and new concepts for the industry. If you couldn't make it to the show, here are six interactive concepts worth checking out…

Bella Pierre—Wonderful line of mineral cosmetics. This is a perfect demonstration line with fantastic mark-up… and I love the quality of the products!

Wow Smile—Wow Smile has designed a beautiful kiosk to showcase their teeth whitening services, which is a growing concept for the industry. I love the higher price point and super low product cost.

My Design—Adorable rain boots for kids (and adults!) which you paint yourself (and it won't rub off in the rain). However, the design and colors can easily be changed when the consumer is ready for a new look. Terrific demonstration product that will attract all ages.

Ice Prints—Awesome new personalized concept where a digital image is fused permanently onto glass in seven minutes. This product could make up an entire cart by itself, or would be a great addition to any personalization or photo cart.

Miche Bag—Unique handbag concept that allows the consumer to achieve a new look by simply changing the exterior of your bag.

Onesole—Functional and fun line of women's sandals that enables the customer to interchange the top portion of the shoe for a new look. Perfect for traveling light!

Check back this week as I run down more exciting concepts from SPREE.

Creative Play Gallery—A father and daughter (only 4!) team collaborate to create uplifting and inspirational art pieces which they transfer to prints, cards, magnets, etc. The owner, Louis Buchetto, started as a retailer/gallery owner 14 years ago and four years ago launched his wholesale business. I loved the whimsical quality of the pieces.

Remember Me Jewelry, Inc./Message in a Bottle—Jewelry packaged in a bottle with inspirational passages from the Bible. With fantastic packaging and great display pieces, the line would be a perfect addition to your store if you sell faith-based merchandise.

KBD Studio—Handmade eclectic designer accessories, that range from apparel (tank tops and hoodies) to leather purses and belts. All items have Swarovski crystal embellishments.

Barefoot Books—BB offers 50 fun yoga cards filled with activities for kids and grownups, a book that teaches kids how to do yoga and a "Mr. Pretzel Yoga Bendo," a twisty character that can be sold with both products. The combination of illustrations and instructions make the poses easy to follow. This is a perfect gift for the family that has everything, or parents who want to encourage exercise and a healthy lifestyle at home.

Natural Habitat—All fabrics are hand-woven in India, and showcase beautiful colors and designs on pillows and bedding. The bedding is made from recycled pillow fabric. There's also a cute line of cat and dog pillows perfect for the animal section of your store.

The verdict is in (unofficially) that the January Atlanta Gift Show was overwhelmingly successful for 99% of the exhibitors who we interviewed during, and after, the show.

Steve Rose, marketing coordinator for burton + Burton said, "Traffic in the halls may have looked like it was down, but we had over 30 reps writing orders at one time, and still had some who were waiting in line for the available sales rep! The show was non-stop for us."

Among the many companies we chatted with, Tom Zimmerman, VP of Sales & Marketing for Two's Company, also told us that the show was very successful for them, and that sales were up this year in comparison to last year.

And here's more! Yesterday I received survey results from a non-profit organization, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. The institute recently concluded a survey of roughly 1,000 retailers in the gift sectors. These retailers were in cities with active "Buy Local" campaigns and the survey found that many retailers reported strong holiday sales. Also, 82% of survey respondents said that the fact that their businesses were independently owned mattered to most of their customers.

How does all this upbeat news square with the more sobering reports from Wall Street? It's simple: independent gift and home furnishing stores are finding new messages that work. They are playing up their strengths, superior service and a merchandise mix not found in mass merchandise stores and urging customers to buy local. There are opportunities out there for every shop owner; you just have to figure out how to tap into it.