1. 6
WWD WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2012
SECTION II
DOMESTIC TRADE SHOWS
Vegas Organizers Shuffle the Deck
By RACHEL BROWN and
FATIMA RIZWAN
Las Vegas trade show operators are
sharpening their focus.
With the uneven economy putting pressure on retailers’ budgets and schedules, it’s not enough
to throw brands together and hope
buyers will turn up at trade shows.
Advanstar Global LLC (owner of
MAGIC, WWDMAGIC, Project, Pool and
ENK, which it acquired last month)
and Business Journals Inc. (owner of
AccessoriesTheShow, MRket and Stitch,
formerly known as Moda Las Vegas) are
keenly aware of that and are refining
their messages and the selections of
brands at their trade shows to ensure
buyers understand their roles in satisfying specific merchandise needs.
Tom Florio, chief executive officer of
Advanstar Fashion Group, emphasized
Advanstar’s efforts in Las Vegas as a market week comprised of several trade exhibitions that have unique points of view.
“You can go to MAGIC market week
and pretty much shop every price point
and category in the contemporary
space,” he said. “Within that market
week, we have our trade shows. Each
individual show, you should know what
that show stands for, who is the retailer
and who is the exhibitor. How we do
everything around that is targeted and
segmented just as if you are a media
company and you have different media
properties for different audiences.”
Among its many moves to appropriately segment the shows, Advanstar is
39.9M
PEOPLE VISITED LAS VEGAS
IN 2011.
relocating Pool from the convention
center at the Mandalay Bay Hotel &
Casino to the Las Vegas Convention
Center alongside WWDMAGIC. Because
Pool primarily contains women’s
brands, Florio felt the convention center was a better fit.
WWDMAGIC is staged at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“It will still be quirky and artisan,
but we know what makes that show successful is retailers who buy women’s
wear,” he said.
Project will remain the main attraction at Mandalay Bay, but is undergoing a number of changes as well.
One of them is the introduction of a
70,000-square-foot section called Project
Mvmnt to replace the action sports-dedicated Street and S.L.A.T.E.
“It is a new, modern approach to represent the youth culture that is being
translated in the world of skate and
urban, and is now finding its way into
young men’s clothing,” said Florio.
Also coming to Project is The Tents,
which will spotlight elevated men’s
and dual-gender brands in 25,000
square feet with its own entrance at
Mandalay Bay.
“It is about a highly curated selection
of brands that are related to each by
their innovation and artistic approach
to fashion,” said Florio.
Advanstar has tapped the expertise of Tommy Fazio, the former men’s
trend director at Nordstrom Inc. who
was appointed president of its Project
and Menswear shows earlier this year.
Florio said Fazio “is a creative guy,
not a sales and marketing guy. The
fact that we have a creative guy here is
going to enable us to be able to interact
with the men’s fashion industry” with a
fresh approach.
Business Journals Inc. has rebranded Moda Las Vegas as Stitch. Previously,
Moda Las Vegas concentrated on
women’s special occasion dressing,
but Britton Jones, president and ceo of
Business Journals Inc., said the show
expanded to cover “lifestyle, sportswear, better contemporary and a very
strong showing of international brands,”
and was calling out for a name that reflected its expansion.
“The resources on the floor and
the staging of the show bares little resemblance to the show that launched
as Moda Las Vegas,” Jones said. “We
wanted to rebrand it and give it a new
name to build excitement around the
You can go to MAGIC
market week and
pretty much shop
every price point
and category in the
contemporary space.
— TOM FLORIO,
ADVANSTAR FASHION GROUP
CurveNV is set for Feb. 18 to 19.
fact that it has gone through such a
huge transformation.”
Jones noted that Business Journals
is cultivating a luxury aesthetic at
Stitch, with fresh taupe carpeting and
revamped lighting at booths made out
of white metal. New brands exhibiting at Stitch include Pologeorgis,
Christy Brothers, Musi Furs and
Komarov Black Label. At another
Business Journal Inc. trade show,
AccessoriesTheShow, three new brands
are Botkier, Oka b. and L
’indochineur.
At MRket, the firm’s men’s wear
trade show, the Vanguards Gallery fea-

2. WWD WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2012
7
WWD.COM
turing up-and-coming designers, will
return with 15 new brands curated by
Michael Macko, formerly the fashion
director at Details magazine and vice
president of fashion, public relations
and special events for men’s and home
at Saks Fifth Avenue. A Made in Italy
section is going to be enlarged as well.
Advanstar and Business Journals
declared that the early response to
the trade show modifications has
been positive. Florio said exhibitor
registration at Advanstar shows, including Sourcing, FN Platform and
WWDMAGIC, has notched double-digit growth. “The square footage is up.
We are bringing new exhibitors to the
show. I think that this show is an important show for us,” he said. “Right now,
we are all pretty optimistic.”
Jones said Stitch would
be 22 percent bigger than its
prior iteration in February as
Moda Las Vegas. He forecast
that exhibitor attendance at
AccessoriesTheShow would
climb 6.5 percent and MRket,
which has little room to
squeeze in additional exhibitors, would see its exhibitor
registration increase 1 percent. “All three shows will be
sold out,” he said.
Other Las Vegas trade
show managers expect their
exhibitions to be strong in
February, too.
Edina Sultanik Silver,
cofounder of Capsule, anticipated that 225 to 250 vendors would participate in
the trade show with directional, independent designers that will take place Feb.
19 and 20 at the Sands Expo
Convention Center.
“There have been a lot of
international applications,”
Silver said. “We’ve been getting more Europeans and
Japanese. Each application
is carefully considered and a
panel of judges decides who
would make the most sense.”
Silver pointed out that
Capsule’s women’s offerings would increase at its
February edition.
“We started out as a men’s
show in New York and then
came to Vegas,” she added.
“We’re at about 60-40 now.”
Pierre Nicolas Hurstel,
vice president of CurveNV,
the lingerie and swimwear
show being held at The
Venetian Las Vegas Casino,
Hotel & Resort on Feb. 18
and 19, said the show has
been growing 20 percent annually every year since 2007
and predicted that growth
would continue. He remarked that sleepwear would
have a particularly healthy
presence at the show.
“There are new brands
emerging all the time and
Curve is the best at getting
those new brands,” said
Hurstel. “We are here to be
the business partner of the
brand. Yes, there is the fashion aspect, but on the business side, we need to make
sure the brand is ready. The
U.S. brands usually are ready,
the international brands
sometimes are not.”
Stephen Krogulski, ceo of
the OffPrice Show, estimated
it will draw more than 500 exhibitors in February, when it
will run for four days starting
on Feb. 17 at the Sands Expo,
up from around 480 a year ago.
“We’ve seen an increase in accessories, handbags, jewelry, footwear,”
Krogulski said. “Activewear has increased. Everyone seems to embrace
yoga and fitness.”
Exhibitor space at Women’s Wear in
Nevada, set for Feb. 18 to 21 at the Rio
Las Vegas Hotel & Casino and boasting
some 2,000 traditional, contemporary,
misses’, petite, plus and tall apparel
lines, is already sold out, according to
Jeff Yunis, WWIN’s president.
Yunis said, “We’re keeping it tight.
We’re not growing and there are fewer
stores, less buyers. To put in more exhibitors would be unfair.…It’s tight to
make sure the match between the buyer
and seller is successful. It’s a nice position to be in.”
Moda Las Vegas has
changed its name to Stitch.
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