The February GHA Home and Giving Fair at Homebush is over and was a great relief to many exhibitors who were expecting retailers to be well down with their orders. Feedback from a range of these importer/wholesalers is that they all had a reasonably good trade fair and mostly down only about 10% in sales on last year which was much better than expected.

Established retailers have a healthy but cautious outlook for the year ahead with reasonably good employment statistics still apparent compared to the total doom and gloom forecast by the mainstream media.

Most exhibitors say they had less new customers at the gift fair, but that established customers ordered as much or more than last year.