REDEFINING RETAIL TRADE SHOWS WITH CREATIVITY, CURATION, AND COLLABORATION

I went from doing really average sales at Reed for years and years, and feeling very discouraged and very horrible, to the very first time I was here at Life Instyle, when I did four times the sales in one fair from what I'd done for the last 10 years.

The sort of stores that come here are a bit more willing to pay a little bit of a higher price point for something that's locally made and a bit higher quality and handmade as well. You don't really get that of a lot of the other shows.

Oh, we love Life Instyle. We actually used to be with Reed. When we first started the business, we had more of a beach kind of vibe, so the demographic would've been more fitting for chemists and that kind of thing.

It's a community, and the help and we're all in the same boat. We're here for the same reason. And as well as being a trade show to sell our products, it's the connections you make with other brands that are.

So it's an amazing way to just create a physical representation of a brand that's largely online and celebrate it a little bit and just kind of have a physical representation of the brand for existing wholesalers to come and be immersed in and just be able to try things on. I mean, normally I'm sending them a look book, so to be able to have this space and for them to come and interact and me to chat with them and talk them through everything is such a nice opportunity that I actually wasn't expecting. So that was a nice little bonus.

Life in Style is where we do find a lot of our demographic in terms of the shops and lifestyle shops and gift stores. We do sell a lot of books and a lot of those sort of bookstores have had to diversify into gift range. So I think this is really our target market to get new customers. And we've probably been doing it for about six or seven years with a break in between with COVID.