Houston 2022 Quilt Market Recap: The People I Saw

I am sure you never expected to hear this from me, but I must say that I was really happy to be back at the Quilt Market in Houston. It was near the excitement I felt when I attended my first market. For me though, the biggest highlight of the entire market was all the amazing people that I saw.

It all began when I ran into Tula Pink & Anna Marie Horner, separately, upon checking into the hotel. It was a great reunion marked by warm hugs, kisses (on the cheek) and big smiles. I think the feelings were mutual and everyone was longing for that face-to-face contact like me.

Shortly after checking in to the hotel, I had dinner with Kaffe, Brandon, Liza and some of the FreeSpirit team. We spent a good portion of the dinner reminiscing about 2018 when we bought FreeSpirit Fabrics, what each of us remembered about that time and how things transpired. It was great to reminisce about what it took for us to consummate the purchase of FreeSpirit. That dinner was followed by drinks with one of my international distributors and his wife. The more people I reunited with, the better it made me feel and the happier I became.

Fast forward to day two. It was filled with a FreeSpirit team breakfast and then a sales rep meeting. Sticking with the reunion theme, it was nice to have some face time with all of our sales reps that made the trip to Houston. At a minimum, it was nice to be able to show some face-to-face appreciation for all that these road warriors have been doing especially in light of the extremely challenging years with Covid running rampant.

For the rest of the second day, team Jaftex loaded up the schoolhouse schedule with tons of schoolhouses. We basically had 2 rooms filled all day. Our schoolhouses were noticeably well attended to me which was great. There is nothing worse than when one of our teachers takes the time to prepare a lecture and then no one shows. I tried to get to see just about every single schoolhouse or a portion of each as I couldn’t be in two places at once. I like the speakers to know that I am there to support them as they are the backbone of our company. This is really important to me and I have always tried to attend as much as possible. I truly appreciate everyone who takes the time to teach a schoolhouse on our behalf. Thanks to all of you who stepped up!

In addition to the schoolhouses, this year we had a booth for designers to hang out and chat with customers about their latest and greatest fabric lines. That was a nice change for this year and a nice touch at that.

Later that second evening, I had dinner with some of the Jaftex team, Leanne and Kaytlyn of The Whole Country Caboodle, Janet of One Sister Designs and Koleene & Jen from Shop Hop Inc. After dinner, we hosted a designer cocktail hour across from the hotel at the Grotto. It was a who’s who of the textile industry. What a great time we all had enjoying some cocktails and doing a lot of catching up. You could hear lots of happy people and that in turn made me happy to be able to bring everyone together. Thank you to everyone that took the time to attend.

Fast forward to days 3-5. We all spent our days working the booths, taking orders, walking the show, chatting with customers and catching up. Our team did a great job setting up the booths which remained pretty active throughout. Setting up for market is a really large task and I owe a big thank you to everyone that contributed. It takes an army and I am very thankful to have the army behind me.

The other nights were filled with customer dinners. One night, about 30 of us went to Irma’s and that included employees, sales reps and customers. I enjoyed listening to the buzz of the room as people were just happy to be out and about and doing face-to-face time. To me, that face-to-face time is what market is about and it is truly invaluable if you haven’t caught that gist by now. Until you attend a market, it’s hard to appreciate the importance of the face-to-face meetings.

One of the days, we celebrated Kaffe’s birthday on the show floor. As such, we asked people to dress up in some clothing using Kaffe’s fabrics. It was so much fun and it made Kaffe really happy. We ate colorful cupcakes and gave away prizes to those who dressed up and threw their business card into the raffle. I even offered two additional bundles from my retirement stash.

On the morning of the last day of market, I took the time, as I usually do, to give a Facebook live tour of the awesome quilt exhibit. I know my Facebook fans always enjoy that so I take pride in doing this. If you didn’t see that, you can click here and enjoy all the beauty. It’s also very inspiring.

There is so much other stuff to talk about, but as you can see, I really just want to focus on the positives. I don’t want to talk about the future of Quilt Market. I don’t want to talk about who wasn’t supporting market. I don’t want to talk about the cost of market. I don’t want to be or have the energy to be negative about market. I just want to have a good memory of market and that is what I have remaining in my mind. I will worry about what happens next when I need to. Until then, thanks to everyone who helped the Jaftex Companies have a successful market. Until next time…….