Saturday, August 27, 2011

Saturday Gift Post--Cards and Toys that Came in (or May Have Come in) While I've Been Gone.

Being on the road, it's tough to put together a post of good gift items. I did learn that we did get our new shipment of blue fishy tees. I'm pretty sure we had a couple of special orders for those, so hope that got taken care of. I also heard we had got in some new card orders, which Anne was able to take care of. I am looking forward to seeing the new designs from Ghost Academy.  These $4.95 cards are made from block prints and have a great personality.

Chatting with some of the other booksellers here, one asked what kind of greeting card overstock we had. Aside from about three months ago when I had enough stocked away that I didn't do any orders for about a month, we generally usually have a few week's supply of new items to put out, and we're usually short of something.  Before I left, there were several holes in the congrats/wedding/anniversary/baby case.

Another shipment that I was told arrived were our new and restocked selections from Blue Orange Games. Blue Orange is that French company that makes Gobblet Gobblers, the wooden version of tic tac toe with the "I'm going to eat your game piece" variation.  They've done a great job penetrating bookstores--it seems like any store with even a little amount of nonbook space has brought in some of their line.

In addition to some of the titles we've sold well over the last year, we've brought in two games we didn't have before.  Froggy Boogie is another wooden game that involves frogs racing around lilypads in a pond, while Tell Tale is a tin of circular cards which in packaging matches the popular Spot It. There are several ways to play Tell Tale, but the most involve storytelling.  Imagine having to tell a story based on cards you are dealt.  Competitive storytelling, no less. Amie and I played the game at Book Expo (along with Jenny, one of our kids' book reps) and we had a lot of fun.

And yes, I wrote a couple of ideas down on my trip. One day I'll get them in and then a visiting bookseller can get ideas for their store.

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