Scenes from a trade show

Or, on the horror of realizing we're participating in a global race to the bottom

Years ago when I still lived in Chicago and they still printed a thing called a phone book, I had a land line in my name so I did the thing of looking myself up in the white pages. Next to my name ("Raz! there it is!") there was a listing for a business called RAZ Imports, Inc.

I have such a rare last name that I was astounded to find not just another Raz in the phone book, but a Raz with a business. We're the kind of family that calls whatever other Razzes are in the phone book "just to see," so I actually paid RAZ Imports, Inc. a visit. The business was located inside the Merchandise Mart, a 25-story monstrosity perched at the edge of the Chicago River with its own train stop and zip code. I knew nothing of it at the time, so I wandered to the 14th floor and found myself in a very strange place.

It was a mall inside a maze, the hallways eerily quiet, and no one inside the stores, most of which were closed with signs that said, "open to the trade" or "by appointment only."

I found RAZ Imports, Inc. It was Christmas-themed, a little North Pole nestled inside a carpeted labyrinth. They were "open to the trade only" (whatever that meant), but the doors were open and people were inside.

I explained that my last name was Raz, so I had to come discover whatever RAZ Imports, Inc. was. Were they Razzes, too? The staff got a kick out of my last name and explained that, no, the owners weren't Razzes. Their sons were Ryan, Andrew, and Zachary, and so their parents named the business after them.

"But what... is this place?" I asked. They also found this amusing.

"We're wholesalers," they explained. "This is a show room."

A showroom for what?

Merchandise.

So it's a store?

No, they explained. They were open to the trade, only.

"What's... the trade?"

Retailing. We sell to other retailers.

"So... this is a store... for stores?"

A store for stores, yep. That's what the Merchandise Mart is.

And that's what AmericasMart in Atlanta is, too. Only it's three times the size of the Merchandise Mart — three buildings the size of baseball stadiums, connected by sky bridges, with 7.1 million square feet of exhibition space. And no, you can't shop there. But the places you shop at shop there.

Visiting a Mart is truly a "man-behind-the-curtain" experience, where you realize that all the products you see in all the shops in all the galaxy come from somewhere — and probably here.

Fernseed sells mostly handmade ceramics, and those artists don't exhibit at shows like AmericasMart. But I came to Atlanta because ever since that day at RAZ Imports I've been obsessed with Marts. And this one is the biggest in the world, so I had to see it. A few vendors whose lines we carry do exhibit here, so it's nice to touch and feel the products and meet the vendors (and, bonus: get four nights in a hotel by myself).

I'm not a plan-ahead kind of a person, so I assumed I'd show up, get my badge, and wander. This was not a great strategy. The show is so large, to walk it would be like walking from the tip of Manhattan to Montauk; you can't do it in two days. They equip you with a 288-page guide, with maps and an index, so for day two I made a floor-by-floor, building-by-building game plan for all the lines I wanted to see.

"Lines" is a jargon-y little term for "businesses," but we say "lines" because many businesses are exhibited by a rep group that shows their products to shop owners on their behalf, kind of like an agent or distributor. So you have these massive permanent showrooms with names like John McGillicutty or Simply Treasured, and those showrooms look like Urban Outfitters-sized boutiques with each section dedicated to a line like Springbok or Duke Cannon or Yankee Candle or whatever.

When AmericasMart happens all the showrooms are open (rather than being appointment only) and each has its own vibe. Many of them serve beer and wine or have full bars and are playing "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" through an overworked Bose mini Soundlink. There's just one representational product from each line displayed, so to purchase something for your shop, you flag down a sales rep with an iPad and they scan whatever you point at.

AmericasMart is a mix of permanent showrooms (the mall part), and space for "temporaries" (companies that exhibit just during the trade show). There's also a cash and carry section, which looks like a swap meet happening inside a hotel (think: cheap jewelry, Kantha blankets, seagrass baskets) where you can actually buy stuff and take it with you. The cash and carry section was its own thing, with teams of people working together to grab and stash as many of one-offs as they could carry away in Tyvek shopping bags. It's a lot to take in.

I stayed medicated for anxiety throughout, because recently I've had near meltdowns at places like IKEA and Target. It's not agoraphobia so much as it's the mass-scale, zombie-like consumerism that gets to me. And maybe something about "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" pumping in everywhere. (Why does that song trigger me?)

You know that scene in the Simpsons where Homer discovers the school lunch program is actually milking rats?

The horror of discovering the source of something you maybe didn't want to know the source of?

It's kind of like that, where the truth of where it all originates becomes agonizingly clear. Where it slowly dawns on you that all the lake town boutiques get all their turquoise sea glass and drape-y coverups and "Beach This Way" signs from the same distributor, and that the "Beach This Way" signs, which look like they're painted on a piece of driftwood, are all made in the same factory in China. Each showroom targets a niche consumer: the one who likes Hollywood regency lamps and mirrored console tables, or the woman who wears hot pink "It's Wine o' Clock Somewhere" t-shirts, or whoever needs a Halloween-themed Christmas tree. (There were lots of Halloween-themed Christmas trees.)

The temporary exhibits were less overwhelming, as most of the businesses exhibiting there represented their own products, designed in-house by people who actually care about design, and made for a consumer who probably appreciates design, too. I found some cool new products for our shop in the temporary exhibits. So it wasn't all terrible.

When I travel to different cities across the country, I check out other plant shops. While it's interesting to see what mix of plants each shop carries and how they arrange them (merchandising indoor plants is the greatest nightmare, let me tell you), I'm mostly there to look at ceramics. After visiting AmericasMart I visited Atlanta plant shops, starting with Flora / Fauna in Reynoldstown. As soon as I walked in I spotted some plant pots I'd never seen before. I introduced myself to the staff, told them I owned a plant shop in Tacoma, and asked about the planters. "They're handmade by the owner," they told me.

This is the experience I want when I visit a shop. I want to find something I won't find elsewhere, whether it's a single product or a unique mix of products that only you've pulled together. The Victorian in East Atlanta also had pottery I had never seen before — all handmade, some by Atlanta-based artists.

This experience lights my brain on fire and gives me hope for humanity. It's the antidote to the dark side of retailing, which I got a huge dose of at AmericasMart.

In August I was in Denver and I met up with a friend to shop in the trendy River North (RiNo) Arts District. Inside one of the shops she pointed out some cool home decor and I let her on to something. "Flip it over," I said. "Look at the sticker, what does it say?"

Bloomingville. What the heck is Bloomingville?

Here, wait, flip this one over. See this barcode? That's Accent Decor.

What the heck is Accent Decor?

They're milking rats, here.

This "boutique" buys half its merchandise from mega suppliers, and there are a handful: Bloomingville, Accent Decor, Creative Co-op, Kalalou, and HomArt are the big ones. These companies mass produce designs and sell them to independent retailers all over the country. So here you think you're shopping small, but you're really buying cheap, mass produced designs that are undercutting smaller artists and designers.

My absolute least favorite of these behemoths is Accent Decor, because they have blatantly copied independent designers, reproduced their designs in factories in China, then sold them back to independent shops.

Here is a design by California-based concrete artist Settlewell that Accent Decor copied. Here is another design by Brooklyn-based design studio Areaware that Accent Decor knocked off. When artists like AJ of Roots and Knots or Melville Designs started incorporating snake motifs into their work, Accent Decor must have visited some craft shows or scanned Instagram and quickly produced a serpent-themed plant pot. There are countless examples.

I visited the Accent Decor showroom at AmericasMart. It was the hippest spot in the whole show. The displays were marvels of modern merchandising. There was a coffee bar. "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" was playing. It was PACKED—think H&M on Black Friday vibes—with hundreds of shop owners placing orders, oohing and aahing over the stylish hanging planters, the Memphis-inspired plant pots. And the arches, the ubiquitous arches. Everything with an arch etched into it these days.

They're milking rats!

A couple summers ago I was in Michigan because my cousin, who was living in South Africa at the time, was visiting. She brought back a basket that was made with colorful telephone wire, a beautiful design made from repurposed materials, and I mentioned how cool it would be to go to South Africa to source handmade products to sell here.

"They're all made in China," her husband told me.

What?

"Yeah, it's really hard to find handmade products in Africa anywhere anymore," he explained. He has a business or economics degree and does global finance and emerging markets stuff and has traveled all over Africa, so he's probably a valid source here. He went on to explain that, yes, there used to be open air markets in all these countries in Africa where merchants sold handmade baskets, textiles, wood sculptures, all of it. Then the Chinese factories came in, grabbed up a bunch of designs, went back to China, reproduced them in the factories, then came back to Africa and sold the merchants the made-in-China knock-offs for half the price it cost the merchants to actually make them. So now you have these open air markets in Africa where the artists who used to make these pieces now just sell Chinese knock-offs.

Milking. Rats.

And the same thing is happening here. And it's been happening for a long time.

Over a decade ago I was shopping at the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago and taking photos of creative ways artists were using vintage dinnerware as display pieces. A vendor stopped me. "Who are you with?" they asked. "What are these photos for?"

They're for my blog, I explained. I have a blog about vintage furniture and design.

"You're not from Urban Outfitters?"

No, hah, why?

Because they come in here and take photos of our products so they can re-produce them and sell them at Urban. It's been going on for years.

Decades now.

We deserve better. We deserve to not be tricked into buying something locally where our dollars don't stay local. At least when we go to Target, we know we're buying stupid Target stuff (although Target rips off artist designs, too). But when you shop locally, you don't expect your dollars are split between the shop and a global design megahouse that rips off independent designers.

It's hard as a shop owner to say no to the Accent Decors of the world. I know these plant propagation stands with these damned etched arches will sell. And at that fantastic price point! Instead, we sell handmade products and customers ask, "Why is this so expensive?" We explain: because it was made by an artist in your community who sat at a potter's wheel and crafted this piece by hand. It's the real deal, the original, and when you buy it your money supports our shop and the artist who made it. Because that's the economy we want to build and sustain.

But not every customer can afford a handmade pot, and I'm competing with Lowe's and Target, too. So here are my criteria for purchasing products made on a mass scale:

• Does the importer have a long-standing, good relationship with the factory? Have they visited the factory in person? Yes? Then, yes.

• Does the factory maintain fair labor practices and a commitment to environmental sustainability? Yes? Then, yes.

• Does the design of the mass produced product ape a handmade design? Does it include details that appear as if they are handmade, such as hand painted detail or etching, when it is not, in fact, handmade? Yes? Then, no.

• Is the vessel we're purchasing utilitarian? Does it serve the exact function required of it, such as a pot with a drain hole, with no extraneous features or detailing? Yes? Then, yes.

• Does the importer of this product run an ethical business? Are they local? Do they pay their warehouse and administrative staff well? Yes? Then, yes.

It's not always easy to ascertain this information, but I try. Progress, not perfection.

As a consumer, you should look at labels. It's easy to spot Creative Co-op and Bloomingville designs, as they usually retain the original stickers with those brand names on them. Accent Decor has a barcode label that's also easy to recognize if you know what you're looking for (it's large and says "ITEM NO." on it, followed by an item number). Or ask the salespeople if they know where the products are made, and by whom. Ask if they carry handmade products or emerging designers. As a shop owner I love to be asked this, because I want to tell you the story of the products we carry and the people who made them.

I want to keep telling those stories. I don't want to participate in the global race to the bottom. I don't want to milk rats. I will, occasionally though, pump "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" into my shop just for the vibes.

If you like what you're reading the best way to show appreciation is to forward this to a person you think would like it — maybe someone who owns a shop, or makes or designs things that sell at retail.