Designers and brand owners realize that they can create a business model from anywhere. Even if that’s the case, an open and diversified trade event is a beacon for designers, retailers and global manufacturers. Now more than ever, there is a need to have merchants meet their vendors and to touch and feel product. The internet cannot replace any of that, so trade exhibitions are vital.
For fashion retailers, looking a brand’s creator in the eye is now more important than ever. The fact is that 15% of attendees to the Magic Trade Show are buyers from online retailers — where else would they find the product for their unique demographic? A professional trade showcase is of even greater value to an apparel and footwear industry that has been disrupted, and the current consumer buying data shows that there is lots of business to be done — albeit fractionalized. The reality is that trade shows are even more important for increasing the productivity of time-pressed buyers.
As more traditional retailers have closed their doors in this digital environment, many brands that never entered the stand-alone retail space want to open stores. There will be a mix of online start-ups and wholesale labels looking to build direct-to-consumer businesses, perhaps “testing the waters” with a year-by-year lease.
In order to be successful, these new retail merchants will need to showcase items from other vendors to round out the customer experience. Even giant brands like Nike and Coach are incorporating pop-ups into their strategies, finding that it’s an effective way to create hype and acquire new customers. Coach opened 130 pop-ups last year and is planning dozens more this year.
And yet, certainly not every impulse item in these spaces have the Coach label. So, where would they all go to find ancillary merchandise? A trade show!
An entire economy has emerged around the pop-up shop concept. There are even one-click solutions, such as “naked Retail,” that fill empty storefronts with wares from multiple brands and that assist with display techniques specifically for pop-ups with millennial- and generation Z-friendly design trends. Merchandisers for a pop-up strategy look for items that are complementary to the existing brand and concept. Where do they find them? At a trade show!
The entire world of consumer product merchandising is really about chasing what’s cool. It’s a perennial quest for the next hot label, shop, concept and conversation. Where else do all of these thinkers come together but at a trade show!
When industries are being disrupted, some business institutions have people who put their heads in the sand and pretend that change is not happening. Some landlords still look for retail tenants to sign a 10-year lease, only now realizing that the retail industry doesn’t support that anymore. These leases will not exist for new retailers. Merchandising must change at the same rapid pace, and finding new vendors is the key to the existence of trade shows.
Magic is continually working to help myriad new buyers and merchandisers navigate the various venues, particularly since 50% of the attending buyers search through more than one show within the Magic complex.
There is a clear advantage of having a broad view available at a trade show, for both the new entrants into our industry as well as the old timers who rightly feel the need to see what’s happening in the varied world of retailing. Additionally, and perhaps even more importantly, Magic is a showcase where all United States fashion brands can display their product to the world and where the world can view our industry. Therefore, if we want to create a sense of unity and purpose as an important industry in the U.S., then a semi-annual meeting place remains highly relevant. Plus, for all the other exhibiting nations producing consumer products, having the various segments within Magic creates a hub for their industry on a world-wide scale, and it offers them the opportunity to create a unified identity.
The management of MAGIC is putting considerable investment into digital technology to make a trip to their trade events more effective and time-efficient than ever. However, no one believes that digital technology will remove the relevance of the face to face interaction of buyer and seller. Just sitting and waiting for the internet to tell a “real” merchant what to buy is certainly not the way to go!
Ilse Metchek
California Fashion Association
ilse@calfashion.org
