Craft connoisseurs collected at our client in Connecticut this weekend, where attendance climbed and sales catapulted.

The crowds love the Sugarloaf Crafts Festival in Hartford – and so did the media. The show was covered in the Hartford Courant, and the Courant’s Savvy Shopping Blog conveyed all the show specials and deals. The FOX CT cameras captured the creativity of local artists, communities were clued in thanks to the local news website, Patch, and bloggers crooned over the creative concoctions from Sugarloaf gourmet food purveyors.

And the count: a 15% increase in sales and an 18% increase in attendance.

Cool!

This was a record breaking weekend – not just for the warm temperature, or the world news, or the performances (or lack thereof) during March Madness. The Sugarloaf Crafts Festival in Oaks, Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia also saw record-breaking numbers and record press.

Record #1: Attendance was the highest ever for this show – and you could tell! The aisles and booths were packed with happy browsers…

Record #2: And buyers! Artists set a new record for sales.

Record #3: Sales at 12 of the last 13 Sugarloaf shows have been up. We think that might be a record for the consumer show industry.

And it was all on the record. The Festival was in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Do This! section, featured in the The Times Herald, and showcased by Montgomery Newspapers.

We’re hiring!

Himmelrich PR has a position open for an Account Executive – someone to work with local and national media to create visibility for our clients, develop creative promotions, and manage client relationships.

Who are we looking for? Someone who:
- has at least two years of public relations experience
- has proven success identifying, pursuing and placing prominent media coverage
- is fluent with social media applications, tools and techniques
- is a strong writer for all types of media
- has experience developing and coordinating promotional activity
- knows a lot of people and has a strong network of contacts
- is a self-starter and can work independently while being part of a collaborate team.

Sound fun? (It is.) Interested? (Hope so.) Show us your stuff. We are accepting resumes at jobs@himmelrich.com. No phone calls, ok?

Over the weekend the Sugarloaf Crafts Festivals hosted its first show of the spring season in Somerset, New Jersey. And in typical spring fashion, with a little rain, attendance bloomed (and boomed!).

The more than 250 artists at the show were delighted to see droves of craft lovers at the Garden State Exhibit Center despite some wet weekend weather. Attendance was up by 18 percent compared to last year, and individual booth sales increased by over 30 percent!

Clearly, this past weekends was the “perfect storm” for Sugarloaf.

Sugarloaf’s spring season continues this weekend in Oaks, PA, with four more shows through the end of April.

The official start of Spring might not be until next week, but don’t tell that to the more than 60,000 folks who poured into the Maryland Home & Garden Show the last two weekends.

The Show producers reported record turnout, with the highest attendance they’ve seen at any one Show day over the past five years. They also celebrated the success of their new partnership with Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake, and its Garden Preview Party (attended by The Sun’s Sloane Brown and by local maven Diane Macklin).

With even more coverage by WJZ-TV, WBAL-TV’s Sandra Shaw, local Patch.com hubs, The Carroll County Times, and Patuxent Publishing’s family of community newspapers (to name a few) – there was no question that that Spring was in the air.

We like to think we’re known for our good thinking (after all, that’s our tag line) and the good work we produce for our clients (since that’s why we’re here), but today, we seem to be known for being… here.

Our office is in an historic manufacturing building adjacent to Baltimore’s Jones Falls. It’s common for the water from the Falls to rise on rainy days, and not uncommon for our parking lot to become flooded during long, heavy downpours. So today, with Baltimore expecting 2-4″ of inches and flash flooding, we’ve been flooded - with phone calls, emails and text messages asking if we’re still here.

We are. Let’s face it: we’re PR people. We’re all about anticipation, news and suspense. We’ve been making regular “field trips” downstairs (two by two, in the spirit of the experience) to check on the rising water.

It is, indeed, rising.

And by “aweigh,” we mean “a way up!” As in attendance.

The 55th New England Boat Show at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center offers nine days of summer fun to snowy, soggy New Englanders - and they are coming out in record numbers. The show’s first weekend boasted a 38% increase in attendance over last year, with exhibitors reporting some of their strongest sales in years. That’s great news for the show and for the boating community (as well as the media relations firm for the show - us!).  Event organizers are already signing exhibitors for next year’s show with plans to expand with even more boats and entertainment. The show continues through this coming weekend.

As do we.

Mike Fila has been asked to serve on the Advisory Board for Business Volunteers Unlimited Maryland’s GIVE (Getting Involved in Volunteer Experiences) program. (Mike said yes to the invitation.)

Mike was part of GIVE’s inaugural class last year, and really epitomizes the program’s goal: to raise awareness among the next generation of civic leaders about the growing need for volunteerism and to engage them in the community while providing educational learning seminars to help them develop personally and professionally.

We support BVU… and GIVE… and Mike.

Yesterday, agency president Steve Himmelrich spoke to a Public Relations Strategy class at the University of Baltimore. Judging from the student tweets during and after the class, it seems as though the students most appreciated Steve’s comments about how to integrate social and “traditional” media, the value of good writing in everything from press releases to brief emails, and the importance of planning.

Steve also appreciated what he

learned during the presentation.

- Asking questions and showing interest is always impressive. (Putting your head on the desk is less so.)

- Knowing theory and strategy is important, but people (especially eager and motivated students) want to know how it directly relates to finding and doing a good job.

- You never know when you will have an opportunity to show off what you know, so know a lot (such as Steve being able to recite to the class the names of all the Housewives of Atlanta).

- We like what we do. There is great satisfaction in pointing to client success and knowing that you had something to do with it.

Here. There. And everywhere. Some of our clients had event-filled days this past weekend, so we were on call, in the trenches, and out of town.

The Woodworking and D.I.Y. Show traveled to St. Louis, where throngs of do-it-yourselfers flocked to see the latest gadgets and gizmos for their home workshops and a meet-and-greet with Tommy Mac, host of Rough Cut-Woodworking on PBS.

Dr. Helen Fisher, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site Chemistry.com, spoke to a packed house at the Maryland Science Center about the science of love.

The Contemporary Museum hosted its annual Winter Party, a three-part evening featuring the opening of its new exhibit, Agitated Histories, cocktails and dinner, and a late-night dance party.

On Sunday morning, the Contemporary’s monthly Café event introduced art lovers to Kendall Bruns, who created the latest installation in “New View” window exhibit series.

Onto another week.