February 7th – 9th 2016 and Silly Old Sea Dog is off to London Edge! We have been asked many times over the past couple of years if we offer wholesale, and the answer had always been no. The reason for this simply that in the beginning we did not have the infrastructure to commit to wholesale orders and satisfying the demands of retailers.
Since we have now instructed a factory who have taken on all of our manufacture (still here in the UK) it felt right to offer a line for wholesale and we thought no better place to do this than London Edge.
The dresses you see displayed here are exclusive to wholesale customers, and cannot be purchased via our website. if you are interested in speaking to us about wholesale, please email: sillyoldseadog@yahoo.co.uk
We set up our stand on the Saturday – myself with the help of Lisa our in house Photographer. The stall is smaller than I am used to filling for retail purposes and as we only had one sample dress of each style, it felt as if we did not have a lot to fill the space with compared to our normal set up.
Luckily at 3am on the Wednesday morning I came up with the idea of displaying our stand with a vintage camping theme! Afterall I already had everything that we needed to set this up – including fake grass, logs from my home fire, flasks, a retro camping table and deck chairs, beach balls, buckets and spades, a radio and camping lights. As well as some camping themed fabric for the back drop which had been sitting in my studio for a while.
On day 1 we were pretty quiet customer wise, but Lisa had the chance to grab a makeover from October Divine at The Pin Up Academy who had brought along lots of fabulous props from their studio into London Olympia for the show.
I also had a chance to look around and see what other products were available. The team at Alchemy had this great Marie Antoinette headpiece on their stall and I got to catch up with the fashion show – featuring new looks from Hell Bunny and Voodoo Vixen to name a few.
Our stall was surrounded by some fab other brands including the lovely ladies at Tallulah’s Threads (who were also new), Bettie Paige Shoes and Daisy Dapper.
Other brands showcasing at London Edge included Yummy Gummy Latex, Catriona Stewart Latex, Bows & Crossbones, Lady Lucks Boutique, Lola Ramona and Zoe Vine.
After the first day, London Edge hosted an afterparty for all exhibitors. We attended for a short while, but knowing we had to be up super early the next day to trade again, I wasn’t in my normal crazy party mood, so we ended up going to Pizza Express with the reps from Iron Fist instead and getting back home to bed quite early! ……. how boring!
For day two, we were really busy speaking to customers and making contacts. So we didn’t have a s much time to look around, however Lisa popped over to see October again to get her hair done.
During the evening we headed over top the most fabulous bar in Soho called Cahoots, if you havent been here before, you have to check this out! It is an old Underground station which has been transformed into a bar with a 1940’s feel, and they have the best cocktail menu, with 100’s of options!
For the final day of London Edge we were very busy again, but we managed to catch up with a few of our Blogger friends including Betty Pamper – who made a presentation about Plus Size Fashion and Secret Plus Size Goddess who has written her own review of the day here.
And we also managed to catch up with Sarah from Sarah’s Doo Wop Doos and grab the latest copy of Vintage Life Magazine, which contains mine and Lisa’s article about Vintage Bridal.
And on our last day in London before retuning to Cornwall, we stopped off in Dalston to meet my friend Maxine and get the pancakes which were owed to us as we were too busy working on pancake day!
See you next time London Town …….
Alison x