MISFIT
Why go to fairs? T
he world turns, the winter is past, spring is out of the way and summer is almost over and here I am getting ready for the big Fair season. As I book my train tickets and hotel rooms (see below) I started
to ask myself whether my journeys were really necessary. Did I really get anything out of my visits to Micam and GDS and our own exhibitions? I have been doing business with most of the suppliers I visit for some years now. I know the quality of their products and can see their styles on the internet. We can communicate by telephone and e-mail perfectly satisfactorily. Indeed if we wanted to set up a Skype connection we could even see each other as we talk on the phone, although I am not sure what profit here would be in that. Yes, it is nice to have human contact with the people I do business with, like the nice man from Palermo who assures me he is part of the Camorra which I don’t believe for a moment, but if he is what he says he is how does that affect me? We have taken a liking to each other and always have a meal together, as we are both lonely souls a long way from home, but our friendship, when it comes down to it, is based on his delivering sandals that I can sell on time and my paying his invoice promptly. So, really, what is the point of my hauling
myself off to the depths of Europe year by year? I suppose that in a way it is a bit like Christmas. A great deal of anticipation, great excitement, lots of money spent, and then the reckoning, as the orders get delivered and I unpack them wondering what on earth I have done. Actually that is just me being pessimistic; I feel that way every time a new line arrives. I make it a rule to march up and down every aisle in the hope of
The Fair season also chimes with the weather. The autumn fairs seem
to actually bring the summer to an end. I leave a warm England in bright sunlight, spend a few days away and by the time I come back there is that certain autumnal chill in the air. The same goes for the spring fairs which always seem to coincide with the days when people start to leave their coats at home. In Italy I have to cope with Wet Wednesday in Wigan syndrome. This is
a phrase I mutter to myself whenever I am tempted by some gorgeous colourful creation. It may look fabulous in Italian sunshine, but will it play so well in our greyish climate? On the other hand there have been occasions when I have ignored WWinW, bought something scaringly exotic and rubbed my hands in glee as they shot out of the shop. Equally there have been other times when I have had to flog the lot off at a loss. It beats betting on horses, I suppose. I imagine I could save myself the money and the time and do all my
business on the internet but somehow it would not be the same. There is a world of difference between staring at a picture of a shoe on
There is another small advantage in going to fairs. I get to see my competitors and realise that they are just normal family men and women who back winners and losers and suffer from much the same problems as I do.
coming across a new source that no-one else has discovered, cornering the market in this revolutionary new shoe idea and making my fortune. A man can dream. The reality is always stand after stand of much the same thing at much the same prices. I have occasionally come across that something completely
different and taken a punt on it. Nearly every time the order never got delivered or the great British public failed to agree with me that what I had bought was not the latest and the greatest and the best thing since sliced bread, so for the most part I wasted money, energy and sole leather. There is another small advantage in going to fairs. I get to see my
competitors and realise that they are just normal family men and women who back winners and losers and suffer from much the same problems as I do. Isolated from the world in the cocoon of Misfit Shoes for most of the year I start to see them as supermen who all run much more successful business than mine. Rationally speaking this is quite unreasonable, but I must be allowed my neuroses.
12 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • SEPTEMBER 2011
the screen and actually handling and feeling it, as well as seeing and talking to the guy who made it. For one thing the colours are never the same and you can’t look inside and underneath a style shown on the monitor. No internet connection is going to tell the heels are so badly attached they are sure to fall off. The question “are you a solvent and serious supplier?” is never included in a list of FAQs. No computer can give you a moment like the one when I was on a
stand in, I think, Milan, talking to a possible supplier when a mate of his who knew us both wandered past giving us a cheerful wave as he did do. The man on the stand broke off our conversation to ask if I was OK and got a one word answer which made me unreasonably proud. The word was Prima. So after due consideration I have decided to go on buying those train
tickets and reserving those hotel rooms. Why train tickets? I found out I can travel by train in comfort to the centre of the cities where these events take place without having to get to the airport hours before my flight to queue up to have some jobsworth remove my bottle of water and peer at my shoes. I used to have to sleep overnight on the train but now high speed trains mean I don’t even have to do that.
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