Scarlet Opus Trends Blog

SURFACES Expo 2012: Miss V in Vegas

From: victoria@scarletopus.com

To: shelley@scarletopus.com

Sent: 25.01.12 at Who-Knows-What-Time!

Subject: Trends Hub Triumph!

Greetings from Crazy Town Miss P!

The Dreamweaver & I have set-up base in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas for another SURFACES Expo.  I took your advice and started getting up & going to bed later for a week prior to the trip, to try to get into the West Coast time zone…and I can honestly say that it really made NO difference whatsoever.  I’m exhausted!!!

We arrived last Thursday and after 2 days of R&R (which actually involved a HUGE amount of walking!) we headed down to the exhibition halls on Sunday morning to meet up with the brilliant Don Dunkley & Frank (“I’m the Greatest!”) Caputo, who had been tasked with building our Trends Hub vision again this year.  They were sorry not to see you at the show this time around Miss P.

As you know the theme for the Trends Hub for 2012 was a British ’Gentleman’s Club’ styling.  The Hanley Wood team loved the idea straight away and Don was enthusiastic about getting the detail of the design correct for us right from the beginning.  I even posted a paint chip to him weeks ago so he could be sure the wood panelling was painted just the right shade of grey for us.  You know how I love attention to detail, so Don’s willingness to accommodate my rather specific requests has been amazing.  Hanley Wood worked miracles with the budget to enable us to have the black wingback Chesterfield arm chairs I felt were central to setting the stage for the Hub.

I didn’t want it to be overly masculine, and I was really keen to create a space that welcomed women in what can be a male dominated show.  So we added softness to the design via velvet drapes and included some rather glam floor & table lamps to establish comfortable seating areas for visitors to meet, take notes or just rest for a while.

Here is how the Hub came together…and No, your eyes do not decieve you…that Is me (in a sweat shirt…I know!) & the Dreamweaver pitching-in and painting the Hub walls…

Sunday was mostly about Don & Frank building the panelled walls and getting them painted.  Guys from other booths came to admire the work they were doing and everyone seemed to enjoy watching the Hub being built by hand, from scratch, on site!

Then on Monday the flooring went down (super-fast work from the lovely people over at Quick Step), the Trend Boards & Colour Palettes got popped into place along with the explanatory text and their frames painted gold (Frank recommends “dabbing” metallic paint on, rather than strokes…just so you know), the exhibitor samples got slotted into place, we placed the furniture and fitted the lamps together.

It all came together really nicely by the end of Monday afternoon.  It was definately worth taking the time to bring the genuine British bowler hat over as a finishing touch and as a key part of the Trend Tour (but more on that in my Show Review next month!)…

Above: The Trend Boards & Colour Palettes looked good large scale in the gold frames.

Below: The samples on the Wonder Wall slotted perfectly into the panelling.  Anthony’s sample fitted in with the trends beautifully and was receiving a lot of admiring strokes on Tuesday…

Below: The Hub was popular with show visitors right from the get-go.  Everyone has been appreciative of a place to have meetings, drink a coffee, rest their feet and of course check out the coming Trends.  Even the Dreamweaver chilled-out in the Hub whilst working out the Trend Tour route for this morning…he fitted in rather nicely with the theme don’t you think…

So…BIG thanks to Don & Frank for their fab building skills, Jennifer, Amanda & Katie for their support & organisational skills, Jayne for an extra pair of hands on the panel painting, Steve for his work on the plans & elevations, magic Michelle for her signage design & her work on the giant colour palettes, the Dreamweaver for his support in all areas and of course thanks to you Miss P for your work on the trend boards and text files….and for the encouraging emails since we arrived.

Now we’re looking forward to presenting the Trend Seminar & Speed Trending Tour today.  I’ll include photos of my fave products when I review the show in full in Feb.

As you know I like to be in Vegas at this time of year because the SURFACES Expo happens to coincide with the Chinese New Year celebrations!  The hotels always celebrate in style, but this years displays were the best I’ve seen since I’ve been visiting over the past 4 years.  As ever, nowhere did it better than the Bellagio!

The majestic centerpiece of their Botanical Garden display consisted of 2 25ft Dragons coiled around a cylinder, rising from an island of tropical botanicals.  The Dragons appeared as though they were playing with an oversized iridescent red pearl hanging directly above them.  The pearl represents wealth, good luck, and prosperity.  Sounds good to me!

For the first time ever the Bellagio’s Chinese New Year display featured live entertainment.  The musicians perform traditional folk music with authentic Chinese instruments for an hour each evening within the Ming Dynasty-style gazebo and on a zig-zag bridge.  It was nothing less than Magical!

In the North Garden 2 more animated dragons walk back and forth amongst the plants.  The Dragons all represented natural elements, such as metal & wood.  Oversized red silk Chinese lanterns and giant fire-crakers with LED lights were hanging from the ceiling of the Conservatory.  And as if this wasn’t enough, there was also a 21,000-gallon pond  filled with Koi.  The pond was flanked by 4 Ming Dynasty-style dings, ancestral vessels that protect against bad fortunes, holding enormous incense sticks.

Legend has it that Buddha asked All the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year.  12 came (it’s a bit of a disappointing turn-out let’s be honest.  He must have had loads of buffet food left over!  Maybe everyone was at one of Noah’s great boat parties?!).  The 5th creature to arrive was the legendary Dragon.  It serves as a symbol of ambition and is a master of authority.  Other than the Dragons, I was LOVING the flowery outfits of these Chinese children scamping about amongst the plants in the corner of the garden.

Here is a short video that will allow you to have a little walk around the Conservatory yourself:

I’ll be back at my desk next week and I’ll begin writing-up my coverage of the show to share with all our  blog readers.  I’ve photographed lots of great products including gorgeous tiles, wall panels, rugs, wood flooring, and carpets.  And of course I’ll be sure to let everyone know how the Tour was received and who the delegates decided to award our precious bowler hat to for Best Designed Products!

Chat soon! xx

Trend Preview: A/W 12/13 | Aurora

We start our Trend Preview this month with a look at one of my favourite trends of the Autumn/Winter 12/13 season: Aurora.

OVERVIEW | This trend has an ice-cold, silent and very pure beauty.  It is a Well-being trend, reinforced by our growing obsession with health and clean air post-Japan’s nuclear meltdown. 
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Colour of the Month: Mystic Teal

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Time out with … Dima Loginoff

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Gender balance in business: A Crucial Trend

Today’s posting comes from an amazing woman I was introduced to late last year on LinkedIn.  She is Australia’s thought leader on gender balance; writes about women, work, and leadership at www.TheSheEOBlog.com; she is the author of ‘Little Wins for Working Women’; the Chairman of Peer Support Australia; and runs a working farm in The Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia!  Introducing: Jen Dalitz.

My mind shift happened about five years ago.  Sitting in an auditorium at our annual corporate “road show”, I was genuinely interested as the CEO delivered his brand new vision.  At the time I worked for a subsidiary of a big bank, and the plan was to get households focused on protecting their most important assets: themselves.  (Did you know that Australians who identify as risk averse are more than twice as likely to take out car insurance than life insurance?  And twice as many Brits insure their pets as their own income…)

Anyway, as this was taking place I was rummaging through the goody bag placed strategically on each seat … multi-coloured highlighter pen, squeezy stress ball, mission statement, drink bottle … oh, and a pictorial card of the CEO’s team.  It was the first time I’d seen photos of them all, and it was just so stark:  they were all so similar: aged 40-50 years old, Anglo-Celt decent, dark business suits … and all men, except for one lone woman.

I’d never considered myself a feminist and I’d never even noticed before the lack of women in senior roles.  As a thirty-something I’d enjoyed equal access to education, job opportunities and I’d met many of the goals I’d set for myself.  My career was going from strength to strength, I was told I could be anything, go anywhere.  But looking at this picture (and the research too) it seemed that this just wasn’t true.  The C-suite, it seemed, was still all but off limits for women.  (Note: I did not have any children at this time, and I was later to learn that combining kids and a career is an even bigger issue.)

Check out Jen’s posting on “Mother guilt” and the Superwoman Myth here 

Women form the majority of the population – 51% – and it’s long been understood that women control the majority of household purchase decisions.  As a business consultant I’d advised organisations on how to engage with their customers, and I knew already that women controlled the finances in the average household (in Australia 74% of women make or share all of the financial decision-making, compared to 69% of men).  I knew that this brand new vision of our CEO could never be achieved without buy in from women.

So I stood up in the audience that day and asked a question of the CEO: if we were serious about attracting more customers, then we needed to appeal to the women who made the purchasing decisions.  And I suggested that a good starting point to understanding women, and the way they make decisions, would be for him to put more women on his own leadership team.

I struck a nerve with the audience that day: spontaneous applause rang out through the auditorium.  I’d just said what so many others were thinking: if any business is to attract more women customers, then the team that executes the business strategy needs to “get” the mindset of women.

It turns out there are many more reasons that we need more women in leadership roles.  That day I learned that only one in eleven of the executive leaders in my company were women; and later I would learn that was fairly representative of all business in the developing world.

The doors are wide open for women in most businesses and professions at entry level; but there are all sorts of barriers (visible and invisible) that are still keeping them out of the leadership roles, and this is creating a huge recurring employment cost, in the millions every year, that’s only just beginning to be understood.

This idea of gender balanced leadership has become the focus of my work.  It’s become such a passion that I now write about, speak about, and mentor other leaders on creating gender balanced business.  And it’s a real area of focus for businesses seeking the very best return on their human capital investment.  Why such interest?

Because we know that as at the commencement of 2012, women hold only:

• 40.1% of board positions in Norway
• 16.1% of board seats in the Fortune 500 companies
• 12.7% of directorships on Australia’s top 200 companies
• 12.5% of directorships in the UK
• 0.9% of directorships in Japan