New York Garment Shopping Trip Tips

Hi everyone my name is Donny Lowy from www.closeoutexplosion.com; I have a wholesale business in Brooklyn, New York. The next time you are in New York you're welcome to visit my warehouse. So today I’d like to talk to you about the New York garment district. The New York garment district as you may know is an area located in Manhattan in New York City and basically the area comprises certain avenues, some streets, it starts, I would say about twenty ninth street and goes up to thirty seventh street and even up to thirty ninth street from Fifth Avenue, some people say from Sixth Avenue all the way to Tenth Avenue. Now there may not be an exact definition I'm sure if you look up online, the city of New York has its guidelines; what they consider to be the New York arm district but then people in the business might consider it to be you know different according to where they're doing business or what kind of business they're doing and the reason I say that is because within the New York garment district you're going to have many different types of wholesale showrooms; you have designers, you have retailers, you're going to have businesses that facilitate that commerce that takes place in New garment district.

Now when you're planning your trip in your garments there are few things you need to keep in mind, first of all, it's very easy to get overwhelmed I want to tell you myself you know doing my wholesale business for a good amount of years, when I go to New York garment district, and even though I have an objective and I know what it is that I want to achieve when I get there it's very easy to get overwhelmed. So number one is, have an objective. You know you really need to be focused on what you want to do. The next thing is it can seem kind of contradictory but there has to be a way to find that balance is at the same time be flexible and be open to opportunities because I'll tell you what happens you'll go to New York garment district and let's say you're focused on looking for brand new dresses and you know that's where you need you know your customers, their looking to buy those dresses. Now you're going to store to store, you went to different showrooms, you're going to stores, you're going to offices and in the process, let's say you're in a building, in the fourth floor of the building on thirty second Street and Fifth Avenue, and that has actually happened to me I was in a building and I was looking for dresses and then I walked by a designer and I saw he got a lot of nice shoes. I went over; I spoke to the designer, asked him what kind of shoes he sells? I spoke to him and eventually we were able to do business.

Now here's the thing if I had been you know too rigid in my approach and had been determined to only look at the dresses and not consider anything else, I would have missed an opportunity with shoes. On the other hand you do need to be focused because if you're just going the you know follow anything, whatever catches your eye, you're going to explore then you're not going to achieve your primary goal let's say in your case it might be to look for dresses or to look for handbags and then you get easily distracted, you're not going to achieve you know what it is you're out to do but at the same time you do want to be flexible because you're going to meet some really good opportunities that you are going to find and you're only going to be able to take those you know advantage of those opportunities if you are set on opening yourself to those opportunities. Alright so that's one thing, now another thing when you go ahead and you do your shopping in New York garment district you know as we're discussing you're going to see many, many different types of vendors. I would recommend to you is to take the contact information down of all the vendors that you meet with because you might not be ready or your might not be willing to buy the merchandise that a vendor has at that point but you might get back to your you know, to your store, you might go back to the city where you live in and even might discover that you have a demand in your store or on your warehouse or on your website for the products that you so buy from a specific vendor. If you don't have the contact information for that vendor you're going to miss out on an opportunity. On the positive side, if you still have the contact information for that vendor, and then you discover that your customers are actually interested in the wholesale products that that vendor has for sale, you're going to be able to make money because you're going to be able to contact that vendor and you're going to be able to buy merchandise and then to sell merchandise to your customers.

Another reason why you want to get the contact information of the vendors that you meet is to develop a relationship because even if right now they don't have the product your customers need and if you discover that your customers are in fact not looking for the products that that vendor has but in the future things might change. Either your customers might decide that they want those products or different products coming in and out of popularity at different times so in the future your customers might in fact want to buy the products that that vendor has or alternatively the vendor in the future might introduce wholesale merchandise which your customers want to buy. What does that actually mean? Well, let's look at it this way, let's say you have a boutique in the Bahamas and your customers love brand name designer office dresses and you meet a vendor that has beautiful selection of dresses but the designer makes party dresses. And now of course so the vendor doesn't have the dresses that the customers want and let's say for the next twenty years they always hear customers one is office dresses. But what happens if that designer a month from now introduces a beautiful line of office dresses which would be ideal for your customers. So imagine if you hadn't developed a relationship with that designer you would have missed out on the office dresses that designer introduced right, and as long as you have the contact information you have a relationship with that designer then you're going to be able to take advantage of the office dresses that this designer introduces because you're going to have a relationship that's going to allow you to know about the new products that the designer has introduced.

Another reason you want to keep good connections with all the vendors you meet in New York garment district is because it's going to enable you to come up with new ideas and to spot new opportunities. You might be able to supply also merchandise from a vendor that has products that you don't specifically deal with but you might be able to hold still those, the products from that vendor to different retailers and to different wholesalers or to different websites that are looking for the products that that vendor has. I think it's always good when you go into your garment district and I think this is true for wherever you go to develop connections because also this way you'll be known. And here's the thing many of the times when I go to New York garment district I introduce myself to different wholesalers, different designers, to owners of different showrooms, they might not have something that I need but if they remember me then they're going to contact me on their own and they're going to let me know about the new products that they have or they might even let me know about products available elsewhere. For instance I'll get a phone call from a dress showroom in the New York garment district and they’ll say to me Hey Donny you know I remember you mentioned that you're also in the market for wholesale brand name suits, maybe you should call them up. Now why would they refer another vendor to me, you might think they wouldn't do it right because they don't want to lose the business I mean let's say if I'm going to buy a... I don't know what, X amount of merchandise; I want to buy thousand dollars of merchandise so that dress showroom is taking a chance by referring me to somewhere else because I'm not going to spend the money by them I'll spend some of the thousand dollars at another place but people like to refer people for different reasons. Number one, they might get a commission, they might get referral fee right, if they refer me to their showroom that carries their brand name suits and then I buy those brand name suits from that showroom then they're going to get a commission or a referral fee and it is a separate reason people like to preach good will. If you do something good for someone else it will come back to you.

Now the big question is when you go to New York garments district, how do you find all of these showrooms, how do you find all these designers? So one of the ways that you do it is you go online, find a website that covers the New York garment district, I don't remember the website but perhaps if you Google it, the New York City has its own website for the garment district but if you Google that put in the New York garment district. I think you'll see the website pop up, you can always send me an email and I could try to find it for you. My email address is donnylowy@closeoutexplosion.com that's donnylowy@closeoutexplosion.com or you're welcome to give me a call as well, my phone number is on the website. And another thing you can do is you can buy a directory that’ll give you sources in your garment district. Another thing you can do when you do your shopping trip is go inside, introduce yourself to the different showrooms and then ask them to refer you to other wholesalers and to other vendors that carry the type of merchandise that you want. There's also a website called www.manta.com, it's basically a search engine for the manufacturing business, for the wholesale business. It’s a business-to-business search engine and you can put in different vendors that's you're looking for you know, you get a list of different wholesalers, designers that operate in New York garment district.

So there are many ways to go about it but you really have to be in it so what I would recommend is take the trip, walk around and see what opportunities present themselves and get ready to take advantage of those opportunities. The next time you are in New York you're welcome to visit my warehouse. My website is www.closeoutexplosion.com I hoping you enjoyed this article, have a great day.