Hi Trudy, great to see you. How’s business at the moment?
“It’s great! Our business overall is growing, particularly the accessories and wigs sector. We’re currently busy preparing for the busiest times of the year for us – Halloween, Christmas and Carnival. It is the calm before the storm!”
It sounds like a very busy time then – thank you for letting us come to visit and steal all your sandwiches! Can you tell us more about the European HQ?
“This is the central hub for all European and UK business. It is home to the sales offices, the showroom and the warehouse. Everything Leg Avenue does in Europe comes through us, so we’re always busy for one reason or another.”
The showroom looks great – it’s a fantastic way of setting out your product. Is it well-used?
“Very! A normal day would see around three or four customers coming to spend some time here – they come from all over Europe and the UK. We are very easy to get to and people like coming to Amsterdam so it works well! Customers are able to go through the whole collection in their own time so there’s no pressure to place preorders quickly. We’ve been doing it for three years now and we are almost always fully booked for appointments from February onwards.”
We’re coming up to a key time of year for the party industry – how is Halloween 2018 looking for you?
“Most of the sales and preorders for our larger accounts were completed some time ago. Soon the containers of goods will start to come in and we have to start shipping it out! Smaller retailers will be starting to think about Halloween in the next couple of weeks, but we are well prepared for the rush. We’ll have some temporary staff in to help so we can keep on top of all the smaller orders. The warehouse will look very different in a couple of weeks time!”
It sounds like an efficient set up! Is there any pattern to what customers have been ordering?
“The Halloween market is definitely changing, especially in Europe. Traditionally it was all about being scary but now people are just making the everyday costumes scary with their own twist. It’s more about being creative and using make-up to do something special that no-one else has done. It’s a big difference to previous years, but the market keeps changing so we need to keep changing with it!”
Thanks Trudy, it’s been great talking with you.
