New York International Gift Fair Recap of Opening Day, Sunday August 16, 2009

After overcoming a poorly-planned half marathon, which dissected Midtown Manhattan and most routes from its Hotels to Javits Center, the Gift Fair opened without a hitch. Once exhibitors and attendees managed to wind their way through (and ultimately, under) the labyrinth of NYPD barriers and marathon runners, the August Gift Fair was underway.

A few Highlights

A new booth design - Anchored by innovative Ribbon Fixtures designed to vanish into our classic MIDORI black curtain backdrop, this year’s MIDORI booth stood out for its brevity and simple beauty.

The 6’ tall, 36” wide fixtures allowed the quality and sheer beauty of the colorful Ribbon they supported to truly shine. An edited showing of the MIDORI Ribbon and Handmade Gift Wrap collections, creative displays, and a thoughtful layout all helped contribute to visitor interest. Amid the sensory overload of a packed and vibrant show, a simple, clean booth design was a welcome, refreshing, and eye-catching sight for most.

The attitude – Bright, optimistic, playful, and eager to bring wonderful products to shops and design studios this Holiday season, Gift Fair attendees appeared excited to find MIDORI in a new booth space (#2457) and it was fantastic to see old friends, as well as to meet new ones.

Thinking on our feet - A customer's flip-flop broke under the pressures of rigorous first day action. Fortunately, her shoe gave way in our booth - Mary Ellen Kauffman, the MIDORI Rep for New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, snapped into action. Below is a photograph of what followed:

The customer was able to secure the tired and broken flip-flop using a cutting of MIDORI Organdy. By looping the ribbon around her sandal, wrapping it around her toes, and tying it to her ankle, she was able to continue her opening day at the show!

MIDORI at the New York Gift Fair August 16 - 20, 2009

The New York International Gift Fair is next week, will you be there?

MIDORI® has a new booth location, 2457-2459, and will be unveiling a new booth design, a new Ribbon line, and additions to the popular Gift Wrap and Icon lines.

Fun, educational, and frantic at times, the summer NYIGF should be an exciting middle-point to what has been an interesting year in our industry. Here at MIDORI, we view the upcoming show as a great opportunity. There has been an abundance of change in the marketplace, and we are eager to demonstrate how we have strengthened our commitment to our value proposition, and re-focused our design eye.

We look forward to reconnecting with those of you coming to the New York show. Please stop by to say hello and experience the new MIDORI booth and introductions in person.

And as always, we want to thank you for your business throughout this challenging year and the nineteen before it. We are grateful for each one of you, regardless of whether or not we will see you at a show this year.

Celebrating 20 years: We are grateful

Below is a short, meaningful article from our January, 2009 Newsletter We wanted to share this article with you as it speaks clearly and honestly about how we feel about our celebrating our 20th anniversary this year.

Enjoy!

It was twenty years ago today...

Looking back on the last twenty years, we’ve been feeling many things: surprised, delighted, and fortunate. Less than half of new businesses in the United States last beyond their first year. Very few make it to five years. This is a wonderful country, where it is easy to pursue one’s dreams, but it is also easy to fail. So when we think about starting out on a kitchen table in a little cottage in 1989 and winding up in our present offices twenty years later, the word which probably best expresses how we feel is: grateful. We are grateful.

Grateful to offer the best there is, with no excuses.

Grateful to work with people we respect.

Grateful to work with skilled artisans whose work we admire and treasure.

And most of all, grateful to have discerning, creative customers who appreciate what we do, who demand the best, and who test our imaginative and executive skills every day. Twenty years on, we are still here because of you. And for that, we are grateful.

Visit our new "Celebrating 20 Years" section on www.midoriribbon.com to view photos from the 2009 MIDORI catalog and help us celebrate our 20th anneversary!

Making a MIDORI Photo Part 1: The Creative Potential of MIDORI Ribbon

Yearly catalogs and supplements, monthly Newsletters, websites, and trade shows all require MIDORI product photos. Over the course of a year we take photos of MIDORI Ribbon in just about every use and shape imaginable. It is our job to show just how inspirational working with MIDORI Ribbon can be, and we tend to get pretty imaginative. It isn't hard to dream up uses for our Ribbon and it is one of the most exciting parts of what we do!

Midori's goal, when she started MIDORI Ribbon 20 years ago, was to find a simple way to make everyday an occasion; to make the ordinary extraordinary! MIDORI's wide range of fabric Ribbon is as versatile and useful as your imagination can make it.

Above is the current homepage photo for midoriribbon.com that was also used in our February 2009 Newsletter. This photo is one of our favorites because of its simple, sophisticated use of Ribbon to enhance the scene.

Initially, we wanted to find a way to properly feature our newly introduced 1 1/2" width of Double-Faced Satin. For those of you familiar with photographing objects of different shapes and sizes, you know that what we see when setting up a shot and what the camera sees are two very different things. After some thinking, we found that using various widths of darker Ribbon in a stack made both the color and width stand out nicely in the photo.

Because we are always looking for ways to show, rather than simply tell, people unique and eye-catching ways MIDORI Ribbon can be used, we wanted to add subtle-but-exquisite detail. We used the 1 1/2" Double-Faced Satin again to make two luxurious roses, which we placed slightly beneath the middle point of the photo and to the left for an exciting burst of color. The Ribbon roses appear beautifully in the photo due to the deep, gorgeous color of the Ribbon and purposefully placed contrasting elements. We used darker colors most everywhere else in the photo to allow the incredible color of the Double-Faced Satin to show itself off.

By adding simple, provoking uses of Ribbon we gave our photo a heightened sense of drama. The bright flowing strand of Ribbon and the Ribbon roses captures the eye and excites the mind of the viewer.

We have never had to push MIDORI Ribbon when it comes to making a scene for a photo. In fact, the Ribbon has pushed us. The endless creative potential of fine fabric Ribbon has been our muse for 20 years running. We have made dresses, cakes, clocks, picture frames, flowers, necklaces, hats, home decorations, stationery, clothes, and much more with our Ribbon. Our creative customers and MIDORI Ribbon users around the world have done even more!

Visit Midori Ribbon's fan page on facebook.com for more of our past photographs and creations, as well as projects photos from fans (feel free to add your own).

midoriribbon.com also has Ribbon Ideas, a Customer Gallery, and a list of retailers who sell MIDORI Ribbon near you. Finally, keep up to date on MIDORI news by following us on twitter (twitter.com/MidoriRibbon).

We hope you have found something educational, inspiring, or just plain fun in the above post. If you have let us know! If you have not, let us know! We would love to hear from you and look forward to your feedback!

Next up:

Making a MIDORI Photo Part 2: Using MIDORI Ribbon in your Art and Creations