The Knack

Perhaps the single most daunting challenge facing the gift industry is the problem of how to recognize the next “big thing”. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to predicting a coming trend. The entertainment industry spends a small fortune on experts and focus groups, and yet, as a recent article in the Sunday N.Y. Times Magazine noted, the results are stubbornly inconclusive.

While study and knowledge are a prerequisite for effective gift buying – we do, after all, need to know what’s out there – preparation alone will not guarantee success. Indeed, there seems to me to be a significant but intangible factor in buying which, though I don’t normally subscribe to magical thinking, I can only describe as a mysterious sixth sense or knack. All I can tell you for sure is that yours truly doesn’t have it.

Fortunately, my wife Patty does. Somehow, she seems able to spot a fad or trend before it happens; as a result Greets and Treats was selling Webkinz and Crocs long before our competition. But perhaps the weirdest example of her gift came two or three years ago, when she somehow persuaded me to accompany her to the New York Gift Show at the Javits Center.

Now attending the show with Patty is an exhausting and humbling experience. She races from exhibit to exhibit and yet, though barely slowing down, is able to somehow take everything in. As I stumbled along behind her, longing for the next bathroom or coffee break, every booth, to my benighted eye, began to look the same. But suddenly, the treadmill stopped, as Patty paused to consider a display. “Larry”, she said, “what do you think of this as a kid’s item for the store?”

Perhaps it’s a guy thing, but if you can’t throw it, catch it, or eat it, I probably don’t know what to do with it. So these silly looking pens with even sillier names, strange cartoon faces, and rubbery strings of hair, made no sense to me at all. Of course, we were looking at the now famous Kookey Pens. Fortunately, Patty ignored my puzzled response and look of disgust, and placed a large order. Now, we can’t keep them in stock.

So the question now, I guess, is what’s next? Well, you’re obviously asking the wrong guy. Could it be the Candy Wrapper Bags we just brought in? Or the Switch Flops now appearing at Greets and Treats? Or how about a Giant Microbe? Sorry, but I just don’t know. So I guess you’ll have to stick around for our next blog, when we talk to Patty herself!

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