New York is one of my three favourite cities, and I’ve just come home after spending almost a whole week there. Corgi, Dents's sister company, was showing off its range of cashmere knitwear and socks at the Coterie fashion show. This was a Spring merchandise show, so a little more subdued for us than the Fall show; still, we got some new accounts and some nice reorders despite the difficult economy.

New York last week was a madhouse. As well as the normal trade shows and market week, they had street markets, the United Nations, President Obama giving interviews on all the talk shows, and on a warm Monday evening the Opening Night Gala of the New York Metropolitan Opera broadcast live on huge video screens all over Times Square (Tosca). Whole blocks of the city were closed to traffic for extended periods, and when the President was near, the streets were packed with police and Secret Service. The city was a heaving mass of people, (according to New Yorkers, they’re not spending any money though!) and the weather was beautiful all week.

New Yorkers and Americans everywhere are currently obsessing over Obama and health care reform. In New York, the older people regret they voted for Obama, and the younger people are happy they did. The younger people are still waiting for “change”, while older people have decided they don’t want “change” after all. When they talk about health care they all have horror stories about the “socialized” medicine in other western countries, and they’re sure their system is best; meanwhile they forget that thousands of Americans die every year because they don’t have any health care at all, and only America, out of all western countries, is (still) working on a radical reform of its healthcare system.

Meanwhile life goes on, and here’s a bit of mystery for you: Saks Fifth Avenue, who feature our women’s fine leather gloves in their stores and catalogue, have already sold half the stock allocated to their website of our top selling style, and have reordered – who is buying all these gloves when we’re still in September? Maybe they know something we don’t?

Alan

Our new website went live on Friday, after months of behind the scenes work and careful preparation. Some fine tuning remains to be done, and there are more features to be added, so if you see more changes over the coming days, don’t be surprised.

Our goal is to make this website the essential resource for leather gloves, which is what Dents has built its name on for over 250 years, as well as for top quality accessories for both men and women. Take a look round our website, if you haven’t already – you’ll find plenty to interest you, if like us, you love gloves!

You can expect to find contributions from many different people on this blog, on topics such as fashion news, with regular reports on trends and colours for the upcoming season from our globe- trotting Creative Director, Deborah Moore, (whose pile of air miles is greatly envied by the rest of us),  and from guest fashion writers as well. You’ll get news on latest designs from our design team, and we’ll tell you about trade shows we’re exhibiting at all over the world. You’ll also get a glimpse into the exciting world of glovers, (yes, glovers have lives too!), and we’ll tell you something about us as a company and the community we live in – the historic town of Warminster (for readers outside the UK, we’re not too far from Stonehenge, Bath, and Salisbury Cathedral).

You’ll also be the first to hear about upcoming special offers / sales, and as we develop the social media tools we’ve been given to play with, you may want to keep in touch with us in other ways too. Did you know that yesterday Facebook announced that it hit the 300 million member mark, giving the site a user base that's roughly equal to the population of the United States?

While we’re on that topic, what, I wonder, would John Dent (who founded the company back in 1777) make of Twitter?

As for me, I’m proud to be involved in a family owned business, one of only two families that have owned the company since its founding. I’m a director of the company, based in North America (so you’ll get an international perspective), helping Dents and its sister company, Corgi Hosiery Limited (a relative newcomer, established in 1892), develop their businesses over here.

Finally, of course, we look forward to hearing from you – what you think of our products, our company, and maybe what you’d like to see from us as well.

 Alan Khazam

As I write this first ever blog on the new Dents blog, it's got me thinking that the Dents brand is venturing into the unchartered terrain of social media. A month ago Dents weren't to be found in the social networking mediums, however, as I write now, Dents can be followed on Twitter, Facebook and on this lovely blog. The aim of Dents is to, yes, produce and supply the finest leather accessories but also create an environment and experience for the consumer to do so. A new website will be launched in the coming weeks that incorporates an easy to use navigation along with a better shopping area for which to buy your lovely leathers, whether it in the men's or ladies collections. The Facebook page can allow Facebook users to become a fan of the brand and with the easy to use navigation banners and constant product updates, it allows us at Dents to convey our small leather goods with pride! We are proud of what is happening at the company at the moment; with the new Autumn line being launched, a new website, presence on Facebook and Twitter and this blog, everything seems to be going a million miles an hour, but we'll have it no other way.