Silmo 2013 - Part 2

We were now getting in to the swing of things and gearing up for a busy show.  Taking our time over the first day to explore the halls, find the locations for our appointments already scheduled and start to find out any new and exciting suppliers was time well spent.  We had business to do, however, and now was the time to do it!

Moving on from Rolf, we headed to the ic! berlin stand.  As an innovative and imaginative company, visiting ic! berlin is always an exciting experience.  When we had spent time with them in New York there had been a live DJ provided a great soundtrack to the experience.  Paris is closer to their home in Berlin, so what was going to await us here?

We were not disappointed!

ic! berlin Stand at Silmo

At the back of the stand was a massive food truck in a very retro camper, shiny, bright and turning out quite amazing food!  The things they were doing with goats cheese was quite incredible.  Over at the other corner sat a car completely shrouded in black cloth - why?  Well you have to park it somewhere!  It was Ralph's own car (the owner and founder of ic! berlin) and he had driven it down to Paris for the show.

While the energy on the stand is excellent, the great thing with ic! berlin is that you know it is backed up by a great selection of eyewear.  Their ranges are unique, well designed, fabulously manufactured and manage to straddle the fine line between cutting edge and perfectly wearable exceptionally well.  The new electric colours available in the ranges were beautiful and selecting pieces to add to our collection in Halifax was easy, these frames won't hang around long!

What about the music?  There was no DJ this time, instead we were entertained by Friederich Liechenstein.  He's a German entertainer (apparently) and a bit of a YouTube celebrity, great fun to listen to and certainly knows how to entertain a crowd!  He's easy to find on YouTube:

After enjoying some wonderful German hospitality, we moved on to our next appointment.  This was one of our Silmo finds from the previous day and right now we are going to tease you a little and keep this one a secret.  We are hoping to have this range with us in early 2014, we have put together a fabulous selection and you know that they are going to bring something new to Nova Scotia if we have selected them, so please don't get all activist like on us and be patient!

Day two was almost complete, however, we had one last appointment to go to - TD Tom Davies.  When we had met with Nathan from TD at New York, twice we ended up leaving the show after the show had closed!  This time we had allowed plenty of time!  It was great to meet up with Nathan and Tom again and to also meet some of the other representatives who cover different parts of the world.  Meetings like this provide a great opportunity to share ideas with some very creative people.

When it comes to frame design and manufacture, there is no denying that Tom Davies has added something completely new and unique to the market.  Being able to say that we are the only company east of Toronto being able to offer this bespoke service really helps to set Ocean apart.  Choosing eyewear should be like choosing a tailored garment, we are all unique after all.  The meetings, though, are a great opportunity for a two-way dialogue and we were able to share a little of our knowledge and enthusiasm for lens technology with Tom as he is working through the process of developing a completely new line of sports eyewear.

A couple of hours later we were all done, new frames ordered, new sample colours organised, the show was closing and it was time to head back to the hotel.  It was a good day, a productive day, but a long day.

Tonight's dinner was in a Japanese restaurant!