Greetings from India, last week I was telling you about the Grand Bazaar in Delhi.
You can read it here.
I hope the Valentines Day trading was a success, and you had time for a little romance.
This week I met up with Carlos in Delhi, our Spanish MD, to check out the Handicraft show.
The trade show was good, many new designs on show. We was surprised at the growth in the digital print cushions. From one company (on my last trip) to perhaps twenty producing this product and I have to say fabulous designs. When you see so many companies jumping on the band wagon, you know it's a product that sells through. And the wholesale price has dropped by half, but I'm happy to say still nowhere near our prices for our Oh-so-soft cushion ranged launched today. Digital prints on high quality cushions are major gift trend. Remember you read it here first :)
Oh but Delhi was smoggy and the air quality poor, so many people with hacking coughs, we were glad to escape down to Bangalore. The garden city they call it, and high on a plain it is relatively cool, with old colonial buildings and ancient huge trees arching over the wide roads. Traffic is bad, but it's mostly clean and cared for, the cops are cool in their cowboy hats and always helpful. I like Bangalore.
The airport is about forty kilometers out of town, so you have an hours taxi ride down the smart landscaped motorway they have built. Normally no problem, but we hit a road block and a huge crowd of people blocking the way. It was the Bangalore air show, and the city had ground to a halt.
With our taxi driver practically begging us to stop and watch the show for a bit, and standing traffic, it seemed like we might as well. So we pulled over and joined the excited crowd, as fighter jets roared over head, whizzed past in formation and did spectacular twirls. The jets were great but I also loved the people, hanging from walls and poster hoardings and wherever just to get a better view. These were the cheap seats, well free seats and the people of Bangalore had turned out in mass to watch. Of course two western guys soon make lots of friends in such circumstances. As they say in India "We had a blast!"
