There is no feeling like helping someone look great with clothing. I love the people I meet and the laughs we share. After years of working in the clothing business in Asheville, I have a good idea of what the overall style of the area is. After getting to know our customers, I have an idea of their personal preferences. Asheville has a wide spectrum of styles (like bigger cities), but there is obviously a large bohemian market for clothing and accessories too.

We just got back from our fourth trip to Las Vegas Fashion Week to attend three huge fashion markets. The big three were MAGIC, WWIN, and OffPrice. The reason for attending these wonderful conventions is to buy clothing from wholesalers and bring them back to our Asheville store. OffPrice is in an enormous convention center filled with all kinds of clothing vendors. The items are at low prices and the variety of styles is mind boggling. We go there first to see if we can catch some good deals.

Women's Wear in Nevada (WWIN) features hundreds of vendors of women's clothing and accessories. This event has an overall better quality to the items. Some vendors are very high end. We have done a lot of buying at both OffPrice and WWIN in the past. This time, we found more clothing that fits our market at WWIN. There are so many great clothing lines there. On the last day, we discovered another great brand and wish we would have found them sooner.

This is the fist time we had a chance to visit MAGIC clothing expo. MAGIC is by far the largest of the three with so many subdivisions of the show. This event has mid level to very high end clothing and accessories. It also has sections dedicated to sourcing, manufacturing, and more. It is so enormous that it takes two conventions centers on opposite ends of the Las Vegas strip. Half of MAGIC is at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the other half is at Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

What makes it overwhelming and exhausting is that these events are going on all at the same time. It would be impossible to visit every vendor at just one event, let alone all three. We need to know our clientele in the Asheville area, when buying. A lot of vendors are trying to get your attention, even when you don't show any interest in their clothing line. There is only so much time and so much new clothing to see. So you just have to smile and walk past countless booths, until we find something that looks like The Enchanted Forrest.

Once we have found an interesting style, we look at the price point, quality, color options, and sizing. The most important question we ask ourselves is, “Will our customers like it?” It is a balance of price and quality. We don't want cheap quality clothing on our racks! Most of our customers won't want to pay $250 for a tunic either. So Duncan and I have been pretty good and filtering out the poorly made/cheesy items while being realistic and bringing back items that fit the high expectations of our store.

We bought a lot of great items for 2019 and I can't wait to get them on the racks! Since we have expanded to selling online, some of the items may be exclusive to our online outlets. So be sure to check there frequently. All links to where to find our clothing can be found on our website. If you want to get notifications on store sales and new items hitting the racks, send us a message. Happy shopping!