A local family business who is shaking up the new york souvenir and new york collectible industry

Online, November 4, 2009 (Newswire.com) - As a reporter for the souvenir, gift, and travel industry, I'm always on the lookout for fresh and exciting new product in the marketplace. Usually I find myself pretty unimpressed with the offerings that I see. The formula appears to have stayed the same for decades: tired cartoon graphics, boring text, and bland images of maps abound.
When I stumbled upon the company Fifth Avenue Manufacturers, I was pleasantly surprised to find something bold and original. Here I found colorful and bright, eye popping artwork. This is a company built around the paintings, fine art, and designs of artist Mary Ellis, and not just another graphic production house.

Ellis was the first to pioneer putting original Pop Art Paintings on souvenir product. Most of the designs featured on their items started out life as large-scale canvas paintings in acrylic. These bright paintings inspired the creation of Fifth Avenue Manufacturers in 1995, the wholesale company that Ellis started with her husband Kenny Bookbinder. Kenny already had a firmly established gift repping company called Big Apple Enterprises, founded in1973. As the name suggests, they were and still are the premiere Sales Repping organization in New York City, and their longevity and dominance in the industry shows.

It was at the New York Gift Show that I was drawn into their booth. Big Apple presides over the first isle of The Jacob Javitz Center, filling eighteen booths with a wide array of gift and novelty products. One of these booths is focused on Fifth Avenue Manufacturers. It was the New York collectibles and souvenirs of New York that I was most drawn to. Ellis employs a winning formula for her classic New York Souvenir line. Icons of The City are shown in zoom close-up, contained within the perimeters of a box. This gives a feeling of the intensity and grandiosity of New York City. These bold in-your-face images lend themselves very well to New York souvenirs. The purchase of a souvenir is an attempt to take home a small piece of the experience and hold on to special memories of an encounter with a famous landmark. This way of zooming and cropping a section of a New York Taxi Cab, Empire State Building, or Statue of Liberty gives a tourist that juicy bite of The Big Apple they can take home and cherish. It should be noted that the company isn't just New York City focused. They have designs for New Jersey and Chicago as well as gifts and collectibles for the entire country.

I must say I am impressed with the sheer quantity of diverse product that they sell. The company features New York collectibles such as little piggy banks, teddy bears with t-shirts, magnets, pens, shot glasses, demitasse mugs, as well as items one can use every day such as journal and pen set, note cubes, t-shirts and the list goes on. For a store putting together a display or someone putting together a gift package, one can choose from all of these items, which have matching designs. Ellis says, "It was our idea that the designs should fit together and sell as programs." Usually one sees odds and ends on a shelf in a New York souvenir shop, especially in Times Square. Seeing the entire line at the Gift Show was a refreshing site for my tired eyes.

The company has just recently branched out into the retail arena with the launch of their website www.souvenirandgiftshop.com/New_York.html Now anyone with a computer anywhere in the world can buy New York souvenirs with out the expense and hassle of making the trip in person. I see only bigger and brighter things for this growing family business.

Sandra Martin
New York Souvenir and Gift Report