Welcome to a special edition of BMTV where we are on location at the Spring Fair! The Spring Fair is where all the balloon manufacturers exhibit and release their new designs for the coming year and it is a great place to get new ideas for your business, chat to suppliers and see the new trends for the coming year. So let’s head on in and see what’s exciting for this year!

NorthStar

First off we went to the NorthStar stand and spoke to Annie Escalera who is the VP of Sales & Marketing at NorthStar. One of our favourite current ranges that NorthStar do are the number and letter balloons both in the large and 16” sizes. Before now they have only manufactured them in solid colours, but this year they are introducing their donut sprinkles range of numbers that have sprinkles on one side and a sandy donut colour on the other. These look really tasty, and are a great unique way of spelling out a name or a number.

Emoji Balloons are massive this year, and NorthStar have their own range of Emoji balloons in the usual round smiley designs. however, they also the ‘Poop’ Emoji balloon that no-one else is doing currently. That’s the great thing about Northstar, they are never content to stick with just the standard-shaped balloons and are always pushing for shapes that you’ve never seen before!

The range that Annie is most excited about this year is the new Script Words. These are air-fill word balloons that spell out a phrase. They are an all-in-one balloon that come with a straw for customers to easily inflate by mouth. An easy off-the-shelf solution that we are really excited about. Currently they spell out “Love”, “One” and “Yay”, and we suspect these are going to sell really well.

APAC

Onto the APAC stand, and time to meet our old friend and star of our blooper reel: John Penn. APAC are responsible for the Kaleidoscope balloons and the Gellibean range which we love. They are expanding their range of Gellibeans and also bringing more foils into the market (Including their own range of Emoji balloons!). APAC are relatively new to the industry but are getting into balloons in a big way and have now settled into their new premises so keep an eye out for new Gellibeans throughout the year.

Oaktree

The big news from Andrew at Oaktree is their new brand of durable foil material that they are dubbing “indestructa-foil”. This is a multi-layered foil material that is not only more resistant to puncturing and will expand with heat, but also will stay inflated a lot longer than a standard foil material. Expect to see the “indestructa-foil” brand start to appear on balloons this year as Oaktree start rolling it out on their letters and numbers range. Oaktree say this will make them last 2 – 3 long than conventional film! Due to the increased cost of material however, they don’t have plans currently to bring this material to their 18 inch designs, but we will start to see some exciting applications for this later in the year.

New products for Oaktree include expansion of their pink & blue range of balloons to include more relations such as ‘Happy Birthday Niece’, ‘Nephew’ etc. They are also complementing their pink and blue range with partyware including plates, cups, bunting, banners and badges. These ranges sell really well due to the fact that they can be used for nearly all occasions, so are a low-risk item to have in your shop as you know it’s going to sell.

Qualatex

We met our old friend Mark Drury on the massive Qualatex stand and he began to show us their new range of mini-bubble balloons. These are small heat-seal versions of their larger bubbles that are great for a point of sale of for hanging in decorations. You can custom colour these by putting latex inside and as they are air-fill only, once they are sealed they will literally last for years.

Just to note some of Sue Bowlers fantastic decorations in their displays like this mushroom that is made from an 11 inch and 260Q balloon inside another 11 inch which is then deflated to give this distortion effect! This mushroom is complementing the new woodland range that Pioneer are starting to introduce, and have matching designs in both the latex and foil varieties.

Mark says that the absolute show-stealing item this year has been their range of pink bubble balloons. This is where the pink colour is introduced at the point when the plastic is made and is not over printed on-top of clear plastic. This creates an all over clear pink look that complements their sparkle range really well. What Mark is most excited about though is that Qualatex are starting to enter the partyware market. They have a pink and blue range that they are introducing to complement the sparkle design so keep an eye out on our website for this whole range!

Amscan

Finally it’s off to the Amscan stand to talk to Jim Young about new Amscan products! They are introducing a massive range of new stock and have around 2000 products on their stand which are mostly new products. This is including around 500 new balloons on offer this year, and they have fleshed out their sparkle numbers range but most excitingly have introduced their 3D balloons. These are a large round shape with a separate air-fill shape that sticks onto the side of the balloon. They have these in a few different age ranges, a boy and a girl design for new babies and also have one in a Star Wars design. Amscan are also entering the letters and numbers market with their large and small shapes in gold and silver. They also have some character balloons such as the hashtag and the commercial ‘@’ sign so keep an eye out for those.

A new Amscan product that we didn’t know about until we saw it at the Spring Fair is the new 160A balloons. When inflated, these small twisting balloons measure a whopping 6 ft long and are made to join the Amscan 260A modelling balloons as well as the 360A range that they are bringing out in March.

Amscan are introducing around 1400 new partyware lines including 300 new dress up lines so they really have a massive amount of new stock to introduce this year including a brand new party essentials range so keep an eye out for those.

The Founders of the Qualatex Brand

During the Spring Fair, we had an exclusive interview with the founders of the Qualatex brand: Ted and Betty Vlamis. We are really excited about this and we will be showing that interview in full as an episode of BMTV and it will probably be released in a couple of weeks so stay tuned!

That’s all for this week, we’ll see you next time.

Rob

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