At Gift Fair, Buyers Browse Through Traditional, Offbeat Offerings

Tucked away in a small booth on the fourth floor of the Javits Center earlier this week, Brooklyn-based business owner Jeff Davis made a sales pitch to a potential buyer.“We’ve got loads of Sinatra right now,” he said, playing to his customer’s age as he fanned out six coasters made from old LP records. “See, they come in all colors,” Mr. Davis told the owner of a Pennsylvania fashion store.Mr. Davis, who owns Vinylux, a company in Gowanus that makes bowls, clocks, trays and other products out of records, was one was one of about 2,600 exhibitors at this week’s New York International Gift Fair, which ran Sunday through today. More than 40,000 retailers and wholesalers were expected at the event, a bi-annual exposition where store owners flood the floors of the Javits Center to meet producers and distributors and see what’s what in household products, games, and trinkets.While vendors that sell traditional, mostly higher-end lamps, bath cloths, and soaps are the base on which the event is built, the fair is something of a festival for the obscure and quirky, as exhibitors boast products that are offbeat, often inane, and at times seemingly useless.Do-it-yourself flower preservation kits, “designer” Ziploc-style bags, purses made from recycled tires, Salvador Dali-style melting clocks, and innumerable other products are in the mix at the Javits Center. Some are cutting edge, and others just don’t cut it at all, attendees say.Owners of online- or catalog-based stores, museum gift shops, and design stores are common attendees at the event. Each pays $40 to shop at the fair.The owner of Santoro and Company Gifts and Antiques in New Jersey, Joseph Santoro said he’d been coming to the fair for about 20 years, scanning the aisles for items that might make good impulse buys. He said he occasionally ventures out to similar events in Atlanta and Chicago.In the process, he said he falls victim to impulse himself, occasionally placing orders he looks back on with wonder. “One time we got these bird cages, and we said, ‘Where were our heads?'” Mr. Santoro said, adding that he lucked out when a woman came into his store and loved the cages, cleaning his shelves of them.Staking out a position at the bawdy end of the spectrum was Slam Design owner Luke Haslam-Jones, who pushed his Dog-End towel holder on potential distributors. The plastic device is in the shape of a dog’s rear end — tail up — with space to hang a dishrag smack in the middle.“We don’t actually do a lot of convincing,” Mr. Haslam-Jones, who designed the product a few years ago in Britain and is now trying to enter the American market, said.Passersby usually do a double take, he said with a grin, occasionally stopping by with keen interest. Often, however, Mr. Haslam-Jones just gets cringes from shocked attendees before they move on in search of something more their style.

At Gift Fair, Buyers Browse Through Traditional, Offbeat Offerings

At Gift Fair, Buyers Browse Through Traditional, Offbeat Offerings

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