Brooklyn's New Indie Market Spends Night in NYC

I am officially telling you about this new indie designer market in Brooklyn - more reasons to go shopping in Brooklyn! It is the love child of Kathy Malone of the label fofolle who has dreamed of bringing a space for new designers to show off their creations. And boy did she hit a home run!

Brooklyn Indie Market is the only place you will find Rocks and Salt, the designers of my favorite hat in pink plaid linen. People have emailed before about where to find them, and this is it.

Katie James is a member of this inspiring group, but I've been sucked into the website world now that I've left my day job (funny how that happens), so we had to freeze the accessories production budget to focus on developing one thing at a time, and developing it well.

You will find lots of unique goodies. Brooklyn Indie Market is on Smith Street every weekend from now to December. Here's how to get there, complete with map.







If you are a Manhattenite, Brooklyn Indie Market is coming to you on Wednesday, July 18th! Brooklyn Indie Market has paired up with Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC) to bring you the 3rd Annual Summer, Sex and Spirits - a night of cheap cocktails and exclusive shopping at the Sugar Lounge!

Sexy Highlights:

• 1/2 price sangria pitchers
• $4 drink specials including wine, beer, and mixed drinks
• live DJ
• mystery prize and raffle (love those, especially when your chances are good, as they are this night)

Easy Details:
WHERE: Sugar Lounge, 311 Church Street (between Walker and Lispenard Streets)
WHEN: Wednesday, July 18 from 5-8 pm
TICKETS: $20. A portion of the evening's sales and ticket proceeds go to Planned Parenthood of New York City
WHY: (from PPNYC) "For over 90 years, PPNYC has been a beacon of hope for the thousands of women, teens, and families who rely on us for essential reproductive health care, innovative educational programs and effective advocacy. This event helps raise support our work providing critical information, skills, and care to all individuals, regardless of age, income, or circumstance. To buy tickets contact: PPNYC Special Events Office at 212.274.7260. Tickets also available at the door (cash only at the door)."

I'm going to go down there. Let's see how many Mistas I can pull with me? Come on, girls! Besides, one of the partners of Brooklyn Indie Market, Johanna Resinkoff of DaisyHead Designs is an expert QuickBooks smarty pants in her spare time, so I'm bringing a list of questions that I will slyly ask her because I've spent all of Saturday and Sunday in the lovely database life of QuickBooks...

The Girlie Show :: Watch This Video

Just watched this YouTube video on (and possibly by) The Girlie Show - a really girly, pink, art show of really unique things made by artists and designers, started as a way to bring girls who maybe are ugly ducklings in the fine art world, to a place of swans, all swans!! Thanks to Kathy at Brooklyn Indie Designers Market for sharing!



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Observations of My First Market in NYC

I'm part of the Brooklyn Indie Market, which started as a Yahoo group and recently emerged into a forum and then a new showcase-website. They are market-happy people, and have it down pat. Displays, credit card things, tables, all of it. So when Elaine Perlov put an offer out to share her table at The Market NYC, I took a leap and grabbed the spot.




I made a banner the night before to hang (at Elaine's near insistence, although it would have been fine with her if I'd xeroxed something, but we just don't have one in the neighborhood, so I sewed something). I used my godmother's copper pots to display the jewelry bags and Chow Chows, and sparkly FashionMistas were all over the table.

It was pretty cold in the gymnasium of the church on Mulberry street where this is housed, so our table was missing fuzzy wool hats and gloves. But to my surprise, the sleep mask got the most traffic, especially by men! It was fascinating watching people pick up, turn over, open, close, show to friends in foreign languages, Katie James products. Here are some of our observations on the traffic around the table:

• Men liked the sleep masks, which do have a lingerie quality...(silk taffeta, sexy black strap around the head)
• If a boyfriend told his girlfriend to say, buy a new sleep mask (while holding up the Katie James sleep mask), she not only refused, but turned her head in a huff and went to look at ugly over-ruffled purses. Each time a man suggested to a woman that she like something, she nearly hissed. We soon learned to telepathically send couples away.
• When one person comes to look, they are a magnet for other people.
• People don't really like to be talked to. They barely tolerated smiling. And by tolerate I mean stay at the table. There's a balance between acknowledging them, talking to them, and pitching to them. There's just no trust anymore in the world.
• Reading works. Read a magazine and be really into it, and before you know it, you won't have noticed someone touching your products who'd been there for 30seconds. And she'll stick around when you look up from your magazine and will be ready to hear the wonderfullness of your products.
• Being on the phone can also work. Gives the person time to be anonymous at your table.
• Push your website. Suggest they can buy online at their convenience. Elaine says that she's had sales years later from the markets she's been in.
  

I'm not a shark sales person, which may not be a good thing, and I've got a lot to learn about closing the sale (I was actually afraid to get a sale and calculate tax). But it was super fun talking shop with a designer who's been doing this for 14 years. And fun to see what tricks work (picking up the jewelry bag and playing with it attracted eyeballs and bodies), and what flop (displaying the jewelry bag inside out to show off the pockets...only caused confusion). Feel free to chime in if you've had market observations!

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Market in the Old Stone House

Packed into the corners of Brooklyn's Old Stone House, an ammo shelter during the Revolutionary War thanks to its 2-foot thick walls, were 20 designers forming Design Collectives, selling everything from childrens clothes to handmade silver jewelry to pots to artsy jewelry to guitar bags. I trecked it to Brooklyn, which took tooo long b/c I messed it up, as usual, and made the rounds. I just blew my budget on an adorable pair of shoes, so I wasn't planning on buying anything...until it started pouring. But first, here's what everything looked like:

First floor of the house...which also included one of StyleBakery's Designers On the Rise, Elaine Perlov


Second floor of the house with the organizer (and founder of Design Collectives), Kathy Malone, of Fofolle


Cool handmade handbag maker, Liz Shaw! Her guitar bag are a perfect gift for my little cousin who's been in a girl band since she was like 9.


Love her sign. You can't miss MissAllison.com! And it's a good thing, because her iPod cases are super cute.


Could not resist buying this hat from Rocks and Salt. I've been looking for the perfect fit of this train conductor hat for a long time, and they were on summer clearance even! Their website isn't ready yet (but watch out when it is), but here's what Beauty News had to say (scroll down).


Kathy is in the progress of making a website, so that all of these designers can be in one place all the time online. So until then, email me if you want to find these designers!

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Markets, Fabric, Incubators, and More

Gerdy and I strolled down to our favorite, and only, neighborhood pub, The Abby Pub, to pick up a burger and nurse my aching feet.

It's been a busy week, and it's not over yet, beginning with a big announcement to you all about Park Slope's first, indie designer market, designcollective, which will be showcasing Brooklyn's (and other boroughs!) hot, new, design stars with a sale, on Saturday, July 22nd from 10am-6pm, at The Old Stone House (J.J. Byrne Park, 5th Ave. between 3rd and 4th street). The indoor, air-conditioned, market offers the public the first glimpse of the forerunners of fashion in apparel, handbags, jewelry, children's clothing, accessories, and paper and lifestyle goods. Katie James will be part of it in September after I cruise around Saturday afternoon, checking out how these gals use their mobile phones to process credit card orders! Advanced.com. This is a lovely and lively group of designers that I've suddenly become a part of (thanks to FashionMista) who are part of a big Yahoo group called DesignCollectives, and send out little emails ranging from a Craig's listing for a boutique for sale, to PR celebrations, to you name it. Thanks to one of them, I may have just mended my production problem with an actual stitcher of my very own. Learn about the organizer, the designer behind Foffolle from her website.

Which leads me to the next activity, which was buying scissors from Joann Fabrics after getting feedback from the ladies over at The Switchboards forum as to the best brands and what to look for. That's when I learned about the rotary cutter. Not being a seamstress or trained designer, I don't know about this basic stuff required for small production runs. I just give it all to someone else! But with encouragement from a DesignCollective's designer, who may be at the market, I may set up shop here in the apartment and hire a recommended stitcher to cut and sew katie james accessories. I'm also sending samples off to a stitcher in Alabama...more to come!


And for the highlight of the week, I finally bough some new fabric for new Gerdy and Dinah beds! This time it was from The Silk Trading Company located in ABC Carpet, and I'm so excited about it. Gerdy and Dinah will have the plushest dog and kittie beds around. My pal Little Evey is going to come over for a pattern party as we work on new products for katie james!

Then I walked around Union Square, and stumbled upon a jewelry designer manning her little booth of RecycledConcepts who was just melting in the heat. I stopped to ask about her jewelry, and walked away with a piece of something that I can't remember the name of. Two stones - one that she dug up in upstate NY and one that she collected in AZ. Perfect! One stone aligns your chakra, and the other magnifie whatever the other is doing. I'm going to ask that great designer of BijouBoutique if she can make it into a full necklace for me...

(yes, I'm having a Sunkist later)

And lastly, I popped my head into a Ladies Who Launch cocktail party at Caravan (the shopping van which now has an on-street boutique). I joined a LWL 'incubator' earlier in the week, which means I meet a few times with the incubator heads and other little chics to learn how to hit all of my 30 goals and launch katie james in a successful way. If you are not jumping out of your seat with motivation after reading what they are about, then you must be sleeping. Or watching TV :)

All I can say is, it's a good thing for fresh blueberries from the Union Square Farmer's Market ($10 for 3 boxes and taste way better than Whole Foods's). But I'll sign off with Gerdy eating her massive bone, a gift from Digger, her Lake House dog friend.


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