Field Trip To Atlanta/ Chapter 1

We constantly feel a need to go out and explore what's out there for inspiration, store display ideas and new product ideas. After the 3 day Halloween set-up we had to mentally take a week off and then recharge our batteries with a field trip to Atlanta. Valerie has all sorts of fun places she likes to go, so we set this past Tuesday as our day becuase we have our Julie in the store. Valerie arrives promptly at 9am and we are off! First stop, and the most inspiring part of our day, was to Lenox mall's Anthropolgie. We anxiously stand outside the driftwood doors waiting for the 10am bell to strike all the while taking in their beautiful window displays. Cool thing today, they were atually putting the final touches on the window complete with open paint can on the floor, painters clothes, ladder, the works. Yes, we always wondered when and HOW they do all they do to their stores, because quite honestly they are amazing! And they do it just like us. Cool.

So in we go heading straight for the new ceder wall shaped like a birdhouse with a HUGE rolling track door. Man, are they getting in our heads or what because we'd just talked about wanting one in our store! Of course all the displays are amazingly put together. Just the right amount of this and that/ old and new...inspiring.

So what's up with the picture above you ask? Imagine this in your head for a moment. Valerie and I are determined to get some pics for our idea book, so camera in purse this is how she does it. She has a nice size purse over her left shoulder, arms crossed over her chest and camera tucked nicely between the arm and the purse so no one sees it. She snaps away as she walks. We are giggling...acting as casually as we can. By the way I should mention that we are the only guests in the store with like 10 workers who came up to us no less than 5 times in our 30 minute stay, are they customer friendly or what! So we exit ready to come home and make some new displays taking a look in her viewer to see how we did. We about peed ourselves when we saw the lovely selection of "Valerie's Arm in Anthroplogie Collection" we now have. You think they'd get some hits on Flicker? Anyways, can you tell what she was snapping? If you can, tell us and maybe they'll be a prize!

After that we just had to get a cookie at the cookie stand and off we went to our next stop...........