Well its hard to believe we're about to start our second show! Where has the time gone? 

Our first show at the Foxwoods Casino complex in Connecticut, and it was the Agway show, which was organised by Southern States, who are one of the oldest famers co-ops in the US. The hierarchy is a bit confusing but basically Southern States bought Agway, who were also a co-op with a chain of stores. By the time Southern States became involved most of the Agway stores had been sold off, in many cases to the people who were running them for Agway. So Southern States essentially bought the Agway brand.  We are relatively new to Southern States/Agway and they have only stocked our equine products for a short time. The aim of doing the show in Connecticut was to introduce our pet products, particularly the cat and dog ranges. This type of distributor-organised trade shows are relatively laid-back in the sense that the only people who attend are retailers invited by the distributor.

We stayed at the MGM Grand hotel at Foxwoods which is a new hotel and super-smart.  The whole complex is mind-boggling with acres of slot machines and gaming rooms.  People seem happy to sit at the slot machines all day long to gamble.  Everything in the complex is connected by walkways so you don't even need to go outside unless you want to swim or, heaven forbid, use one of the walking trails.  Our rooms were on the 14th floor reached by a really quick lift, one of the ones that leaves your stomach on the ground floor!

We found the Southern States people very friendly and helpful and the show easy to do in terms of set up. The only annoying thing was having to pay the onsite shippers to trolley our boxes in as the venue is unionised. Hospitality was very good and we were essentially catered for in terms of drinking and eating from morning till night for the two days of the show.

Sadly the second day of the show was a complete washout in every sense of the word as there was very heavy rain and flooding in many parts of Connecticut, and elsewhere in the US. Many dealers just decided to head home and one exhibitor closed up and headed home to Ohio as his store had flooded! The show was so quiet that as vendors we ended up showing out products to other vendors!

Breakdown of our stand/booth was straightforward and this time,for some bizarre reason, the union guys were quite happy to trolley our stuff out to the loading dock and then let us bring the car round and we loaded out boxes in ourselves!  We stayed one more night in the MGM Grand, having negotiated a rate of $99 for rooms that normally costs $350 and the next morning headed off to the Peuqot Indian Museum.

The Peuqot are the Native American Indian tribe who managed to reclaim their tribal lands and then built the Foxwoods Casino on a part of it to help the tribe make a living. They have also built a fabulous museum which features a life-size indian village inhabited by waxwork models cast using real people. An incredible place and well worth visiting, the observation tower alone gives an amazing view out over Foxwoods.

We then got on the road and headed south back to Pennsylvania.